Worlds Information Consumption Pegged At One Million Million Gigabytes
Worlds Information Consumption Pegged At One Million Million Gigabytes
Posted 04/10/2011 at 11:38am
| by Justin Kerr
18
Comments
Print
When Moore first predicted back in 1965 that computing power would double every 18 months, it’s hard to imagine even he could have predicted that by 2008, computers would be crunching a whopping 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of data per year. To put it in more modern terms that 9.57 zettabytes, or a million million gigabytes in total. The good news behind these numbers is that the vast majority of this data is a byproduct of CPU’s crunching numbers, and is not actual human readable information. Even despite these caveats however, 9.57 zettabytes is still a staggering number to wrap our minds around.
If you assume an average sized book is about 4.7 centimeters thick, and contains about 2.5 megabytes of information, 9.57 zettabytes would create a stack 5.6 billion miles high – enough to stretch all the way to Neptune and back again twenty times. Since these numbers are based on data from 2008, it’s safe to say we can probably add a few more laps based on today’s modern CPU’s, but when your dealing with numbers this high why split hairs over details.
By 2024, the researchers involved in the study expect this theoretical pile of books to be large enough to reach the next star, Alpha Centauri, 4.37 light years away.
More like this
18
Comments
Comments are closed on this article
Anthony010
April 11, 2011 at 12:35am
cant you guys like make a graph and show us what a zetta byte is compared to like a terabyte and such? i mean it would help to understand
ubuwalker31
April 12, 2011 at 7:06am
A zettabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes = 10^21
In comparison a gigabyte is 1,000,000,000bytes = 10^9
For other neat comparissons of data in relation to prefixs, check out https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28data%29
doggitydogs
April 10, 2011 at 10:05pm
Something is wrong with your math.
One million million = 1,000,000 x 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000,000 = one trillion
One gigabyte = 1024^3 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes
One million million gigabytes = one million million x one gigabyte = 1,073,741,824,000,000,000,000 bytes
9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes (the number from the topic sentence of the opening paragraph) / 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes = 8.91275704 million million gigabytes.
8.91275704 is not equal to 1 ("one million million gigabytes").
FAIL.
ubuwalker31
April 12, 2011 at 7:08am
Each book is assumed to be 4.8 centimeters thick and contain 2.5 megabytes of information.
garrettp
April 11, 2011 at 8:59am
Is it possible that they where using Fuzzy Mathmatics and you aren't?
MrBlueCheese
April 10, 2011 at 10:25pm
Not really, its not like anyone got tricked up by that.
I knew what the author was talking about.
Also, i didn't need math to know that the math was off a little, but i believe his point remains.
Anyway, that is no chump change. A million million gigabytes, i wonder how long it took for the researchers to compile that data.
TheElite1x721987
April 10, 2011 at 8:16pm
The neptune analogy is wrong. Neptune is a little less then 2.7 Billion miles away from earth. So a stack 5.6 Billion miles high will only be able to stretch from earth to neptune and back only 1 time, not 20. (but you will have enough left to reach a couple other planets though). Not that this makes the analogy any less impressive, but it's not accurate :-P
markstrelecki
April 10, 2011 at 4:31pm
A Million millions is ONE TRILLION and is perhaps, in this era of inflated government budgets, a somewhat easier term to understand.
Besides, the headline is shorter.
Facebook needs to go BYE BYE - another easy term to understand.
MARK STRELECKI
ATLANTA, GA.
MrBlueCheese
April 10, 2011 at 10:36pm
"A Million millions is ONE TRILLION and is perhaps, in this era of inflated government budgets, a somewhat easier term to understand."
Uhh, no its not. A million million is WAY MORE then one trillion.
Second, Facebook doesn't need to go, it just needs an opt-in program - A "better" term to understand.
Mark Jones
Washington D.C.
pastorbob
April 11, 2011 at 4:32am
Not to be picky but a million millions is one trillion. One million = 1.0 x 10^6. (1.0 x 10^6) x (1.0 x 10^6) = 1.0 x 10^12 which is one trillion. Sorry dude but you get an 'F' in math.
tornato7
April 10, 2011 at 3:52pm
is this the new measure of computing power?
"how fast is your computer?"
"520 thousand miles"
"dude, thats fast. mines only halfway to the moon!"
MrBlueCheese
April 10, 2011 at 10:41pm
I think its an analogy more then an actual unit of measure.
Its pretty amazing how much data is out there.
Instead of books, it would be interesting to see how much "physical space" this massive amount of data takes up.
MrBlueCheese
April 10, 2011 at 10:43pm
1) Befriend Mark Zuckerberg
2) Find out where he lives
3) ????
4) Profit!
hades_2100
April 10, 2011 at 3:30pm
The way Canadian ISPs want to enforce "bandwidth", we'll be back to counting traffic in gigabytes, not zettabytes.
hades
P.S.: Please get rid of the Facebook integration.
MrBlueCheese
April 10, 2011 at 10:47pm
"The way Canadian ISPs want to enforce "bandwidth", we'll be back to counting traffic in gigabytes, not zettabytes."
True, but you got to remember, Gigabytes is representing a relatively small number (compared to zettabytes) and Zettabytes is representing a rathter large number.
Although, it would be interesting to see everything in Zettabytes, just to mess with some people.
"What do you mean i'm only consuming 0.000000000000000001 Zettabytes? How am i suppose to know how much data that is?" (Me imagining what a customer would be like if they were to see Zettabytes).
Connect with MaximumPC
Featured Content
The gang discusses the GTX 690, Trinity, Ivy Bridge, Amazon, big-box stores, MMOs,...
This month's issue
Feature
Build a PC On Any Budget
Feature
Cloud Services Showdown
How-To
Encrypt Your External Drive
Build It
Upgrade an X58 Rig
Most Commented Articles
Latest Max PC Tweets
- maximumpc: Original RickRoll Video Returns to YouTube After 24-Hour Copyright Hiatus http://t.co/MaH9Sxyy2 days 6 hours ago
- maximumpc: Corsair has decided not to go forward with its $78 million IPO, citing weak equity market conditions http://t.co/A5a4DAzj2 days 6 hours ago
- maximumpc: Want to work at Maximum PC? Our Online Managing Editor, Alex, is moving away, so we need a new one. http://t.co/9Z7JCh0E4 days 4 hours ago
