Doer
Well-Known Member
This phrase is coming up in the marketing literature in my job space. I try to ingore the hype but at some point I need to figure out what they mean. So I wait unitl I can find an explaination....well not to the common man perhaps, but this suits the common geek, like me.
Just thought I'd share this interesting concept. Do you know about Moore's Law? He said that every aspect of tech that enables computing will double it's capability, every 18 months. That was back a long time ago. For a while in the early 90s we thought it had stalled. But, instead, it was an emerging breakout. We now see, Mr Moore, every 9 - 12 months. Of course, we see Mr Murphy every day.
We are doing 64 bit computing, but have moved to 128 bit strorage, to honor Moore's Law or Imperitive in the commercial sense. I doubt we will need to exceed the quanutum limit, It takes more energy than boiling the oceans, but we will think of something. Enjoy
.
--------------
128-bit storage: are you high?
Some customers already have datasets on the order of a petabyte, or 2[SUP]50[/SUP] bytes. Thus the 64-bit capacity limit of 2[SUP]64[/SUP] bytes is only 14 doublings away. Moore's Law for storage predicts that capacity will continue to double every 9-12 months, which means we'll start to hit the 64-bit limit in about a decade. Storage systems tend to live for several decades, so it would be foolish to create a new one without anticipating the needs that will surely arise within its projected lifetime.
If 64 bits isn't enough, the next logical step is 128 bits. That's enough to survive Moore's Law until I'm dead, and after that, it's not my problem. But it does raise the question: what are the theoretical limits to storage capacity?
Although we'd all like Moore's Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any physical device. In particular, it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 liter of space can perform at most 10[SUP]51[/SUP] operations per second on at most 10[SUP]31[/SUP] bits of information [see Seth Lloyd, "Ultimate physical limits to computation." Nature 406, 1047-1054 (2000)]. A fully-populated 128-bit storage pool would contain 2[SUP]128[/SUP] blocks = 2[SUP]137[/SUP] bytes = 2[SUP]140[/SUP] bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be (2[SUP]140[/SUP] bits) / (10[SUP]31[/SUP] bits/kg) = 136 billion kg.
That's a lot of gear.
To operate at the 10[SUP]31[/SUP] bits/kg limit, however, the entire mass of the computer must be in the form of pure energy. By E=mc[SUP]2[/SUP], the rest energy of 136 billion kg is 1.2x10[SUP]28[/SUP] J. The mass of the oceans is about 1.4x10[SUP]21[/SUP] kg. It takes about 4,000 J to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celcius, and thus about 400,000 J to heat 1 kg of water from freezing to boiling. The latent heat of vaporization adds another 2 million J/kg. Thus the energy required to boil the oceans is about 2.4x10[SUP]6[/SUP] J/kg \* 1.4x10[SUP]21[/SUP] kg = 3.4x10[SUP]27[/SUP] J. Thus, fully populating a 128-bit storage pool would, literally, require more energy than boiling the oceans.
Just thought I'd share this interesting concept. Do you know about Moore's Law? He said that every aspect of tech that enables computing will double it's capability, every 18 months. That was back a long time ago. For a while in the early 90s we thought it had stalled. But, instead, it was an emerging breakout. We now see, Mr Moore, every 9 - 12 months. Of course, we see Mr Murphy every day.
We are doing 64 bit computing, but have moved to 128 bit strorage, to honor Moore's Law or Imperitive in the commercial sense. I doubt we will need to exceed the quanutum limit, It takes more energy than boiling the oceans, but we will think of something. Enjoy
. --------------
128-bit storage: are you high?
Some customers already have datasets on the order of a petabyte, or 2[SUP]50[/SUP] bytes. Thus the 64-bit capacity limit of 2[SUP]64[/SUP] bytes is only 14 doublings away. Moore's Law for storage predicts that capacity will continue to double every 9-12 months, which means we'll start to hit the 64-bit limit in about a decade. Storage systems tend to live for several decades, so it would be foolish to create a new one without anticipating the needs that will surely arise within its projected lifetime.
If 64 bits isn't enough, the next logical step is 128 bits. That's enough to survive Moore's Law until I'm dead, and after that, it's not my problem. But it does raise the question: what are the theoretical limits to storage capacity?
Although we'd all like Moore's Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any physical device. In particular, it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 liter of space can perform at most 10[SUP]51[/SUP] operations per second on at most 10[SUP]31[/SUP] bits of information [see Seth Lloyd, "Ultimate physical limits to computation." Nature 406, 1047-1054 (2000)]. A fully-populated 128-bit storage pool would contain 2[SUP]128[/SUP] blocks = 2[SUP]137[/SUP] bytes = 2[SUP]140[/SUP] bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be (2[SUP]140[/SUP] bits) / (10[SUP]31[/SUP] bits/kg) = 136 billion kg.
That's a lot of gear.
To operate at the 10[SUP]31[/SUP] bits/kg limit, however, the entire mass of the computer must be in the form of pure energy. By E=mc[SUP]2[/SUP], the rest energy of 136 billion kg is 1.2x10[SUP]28[/SUP] J. The mass of the oceans is about 1.4x10[SUP]21[/SUP] kg. It takes about 4,000 J to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celcius, and thus about 400,000 J to heat 1 kg of water from freezing to boiling. The latent heat of vaporization adds another 2 million J/kg. Thus the energy required to boil the oceans is about 2.4x10[SUP]6[/SUP] J/kg \* 1.4x10[SUP]21[/SUP] kg = 3.4x10[SUP]27[/SUP] J. Thus, fully populating a 128-bit storage pool would, literally, require more energy than boiling the oceans.
