Comments on: What comes after the Terabyte?

By: Kimberly

Kimberly — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:52:25 +0000

I think that in time, maybe 5-15 year, we will have found a way to cool down these processors and make them compact. I’m sure back in the day people said the EXACT same thing about gigabytes and look where we are NOW. laptops the size of the palm of you hand. so do i think it will happen and is possible, YES! i i cant wait to get one!

By: vmyster

vmyster — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:46:30 +0000

we have only just begun with proccessor speeds. in the near future, proccessors will be made from man made diamonds which are far more effective than silicon in everyway. Its just a matter of time.

By: casey

casey — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:39:26 +0000

well then it seems we have a logical discussion on our hands, the real question in my eyes is not if we can get to those speeds but when. computer technology advances very fast i mean remember when 2GB’s was a lot? and remember the costs of that hardware? but now look you can pick up a 1.5 TB hard drive for under $100.00 USD and thats just whats out right now, by next summer 2 or 3 TB hard drives will be in and sooner or latter someone will develop a new file system or a new way to store data and then we will most likely be seeing petabytes. but on the other side there is the issue with heat, this seems to be the bigist problem with creating computers that compute at the speeds listed above as many have pointed out there is no way to cool these things with anything we know of so in order for computer technology to move forward cooling technology need to advance as well. One possible remedy for this comes from some news that leaked out about a certain computer company developing a way to grow synthetic diamonds to use for some part of the motherboard or CPU now i am no scientist so i don’t know exactly how this is done or how it works but i have been told that by using the diamond in place of other less durable materials that it will allow for greater heats and in turn faster computing speeds, remember hardly any thing is imposable sure the first versions of these computers will be large and impractical but as time rolls on they will grow smaller and more common.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:29:52 +0000

My response to Kevin… I believe in 10 years we will be laughing at 1 Terabytes. Your comments remind me of a quote I heard years ago when someone said “There is nothing new to learn in science” or “we have learned all there is in science” It makes me chuckle. Think about the first computer… It took up rooms, not just a 5 x 5 foot square of space and did a lot less and was very slow.

By: billy

billy — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:02:54 +0000

one thing i think alot of people have overlooked is the fact that we already have procesors capable of INSANE! amounts of data a the moment (how much i do not remember) but it is well behond what is currently available / comprihendable.

The problem with these processors is that they generate heat so fast that they are only capable of running for a fraction of a second before they ‘blow up’.

So one main part of the evolution of technology is…..

If the tempriture of the arctic+ all our current technology can not cool these things down… what will?
and secondly if we can finaly figure out how to cool them… how are we going to put it in a PC that isnt the size of a house to keep them cool enough to use.

ps my apologies for my poor english i am still getting the grasp of this.

By: CrzHrs

CrzHrs — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:00:16 +0000

1. I see a computer with YHZ of speed in less than 5 years, in practical use in 10.
Those numbers you just quoted were once placed on the gigabyte technology as well was it not.
2. Human recall is not 100% accurate but memory is ! I point to the fact that from medicine in the form of psychotherapy, science and even entertainment, people retain things they cannot recall in their subconscious memory.

By: raden

raden — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:47:29 +0000

Well since we have terabytes hard drives and gigabytes of ram. i would assume if we ever get a Yottabyte hard drives we would have a Zettabyte of memory. That said we would be at a Zetta-Hertz processor since we are at Giga-hertz now. Even though this seems huge, by the time we get this far programs will be larger and more complicated. Remember there was once a time a 1.44 mb Floppy disk carried the information we needed at the time now we have flash drives that holds 64 gb of information. Remember everything is being digitalized. music was first on a cd, then a dvd movie, now a blue ray. There are some people out there that are working on an Ultra high definition format. Which the resolution is 10 times more then the 1080p. so as long as there are people out there that are pushing the envelope, we will need the computing power to do so. Yes it sounds godly but if we took our computer back to the 70’s where computers took a whole room, we would seem to have a huge system and yet almost everyone has one.

By: Merlin

Merlin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:13:53 +0000

Interesting that this thread has been going on for just over 2 years and 4 months today, and how far computing power has forged ahead and prices have dropped, for us ordinary folks at home. I still remember the headlines when a meg of RAM dropped to just $1, e thought that was so incredible, and it ws for the time. I once paid $300 for boosting my Ksypro 88-2 RAM up to 750K, the limit at that time.
I keep wondering when Moores Law will finally push them to break the 4.0 barrier, and when they will stop making 1.X Ghz chips, or even the 2.x ones and finally get 3.0 and better for everything.
But I am pretty amazed at how fast the Terabyte drive and arrived and even how faster it dropped below $100 price.
But I’ve also read that it’s the little flash drive type cards and etc all the shapes and configurations they come in, that holds a real future. That they knew when they first invented them that the upper limits could easily be a Terabyte in the same size.
And what about Crystal memory storage, in all three dimensions of a cube, tremendous potential and space in just a tiny one. I like these new multi-core machines, just got my first one, 2 core, 2.8 Ghz 64 bit, 6 gigs of RAM, 620 gig HD plus a 23″ monitor for $559 plus tax, was the included monitor that sealed the deal for me. I call these Baby Cray Embryo’s or maybe Craybo’s for short, still working on that tag.
For all this speculation on how the hardware is going to evolve and it will, I keep wondering what we are going to do with it, actually use it for. Personally I’m hoping to live long enough for a real Holo-deck experience. I try not to think too much about the Dark side of it all.
As to the Byte names I like the list in #38 especially the obiwannabyte, it makes me smile
And the brain percentage thing, I believe its that we don’t use more than 10% of the potential at any one time, And we never will exceed that limit until someone either discovers or perhaps re-discovers the proper training methods, techniques, etc, that it requires to access the higher levels of use. Just like you don’t give a 6 year old a Multi-core Nuclear weapon sitting on top of an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile, sans the user manual, as his first weapon; you get him a toy rubber sword or something similar that he can’t hurt anything with until you can teach him certain responsibilities of ownership. The same applies to the full potential of the human brain and mind..

And that’s my 9.3 cents worth for today

By: ed desroches

ed desroches — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:36:17 +0000

this is to:
34.Charles on June 22, 2008

That may be, but digital memory is more or less lossless, i.e. we biologically remember general information in huge swaths, but it’s very very difficult to maintain even a small amount of any data at 100% of accuracy. Which is pretty much what makes us all unique, the ability to be forever unique and survice without needing to be 100% accurate. Try that with any computer, and they all fail instantly.

reply to this @ yocto@live.com

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:37:45 +0000

It will be almost impossible to create a computer with a YHZ of speed, because in order to create a processor with that many transistors, and keep each transistor above 100 atoms, the processor would have to be about as big as a 5 by 5 foot table! Rendering it to large for practical use. I have a Two Linked Mac Pros with 3.22 GHZ 4 quad core processors with 32 gb ram, i think for right now this is about as powerful you can get