Prefixes

http://www.magictree.com/dataprefixes.htm

"byte
8 bits ("bit" is short for "binary digit". A single 0 or 1 in a two-state system.)
1 byte can store 1 keystroke.
Half a byte (4 bits) is a "nybble". I'm not joking.

Silly analogy: one strand of hair has a thickness of about .05mm. Read on...

kilobyte
103 or 1,000 bytes (1 thousand). The actual number is 210 or 1,024 bytes unless you're in the marketing department.
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has adopted the term "kibibyte" to combat the inexactness caused by the competing definitions of kilobyte (103 or 210). Likewise, they propose that we start using "mebibyte", "gibibyte", and similar variations down the line. (The "bi" refers to the binary basis). Click here for details at nist.gov.

These terms sound silly, however, so we'll present the more common terms here until the rest of the universe jumps on the bandwagon, with the understanding that it could be interpreted as a power of 10 or a power of 2. When you get to billions or more, 1 billion (109) or 1.07 billion (230) are both a heck of a lot of bytes, so we won't be too picky about the difference here on this page. Of course, I'm not trying to sell you a hard disk, or explain where the "missing bytes" went...

A kilobyte is the equivalent of about 2/3rds of a page of text.

In the late 1970's, a 5 1/4" floppy disk held about 150 kilobytes.

Silly analogy, part 2: a "kilohair", or 1000 hairs side by side (very carefully. don't sneeze.), would measure 50mm, or 5cm, or about 2 inches.

megabyte
106 or 1,000,000 bytes (1 million), or 220 (1,048,576) using binary.
1,000 kilobytes.

A megabyte can hold the text of 1 to 2 books in uncompressed format. Check Project Gutenberg to see. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn fits in a 563Kb text file. His Following the Equator takes 1.05Mb.

If you were tired of swapping floppies on your desktop computer, in the early 1980's you could buy a 5 megabyte hard disk for just over $2000. It was about the size of a shoebox.

A 3 1/2" floppy disk holds 1.4 megabytes of data. These were commonly available by the mid 1980's.

Silly analogy, part 3: a "megahair", or a million hairs side by side, would stretch 50 meters, or a little more than halfway down a football field. Since the average human has about 100,000 hairs on his or her head, we'd have to find about 10 people who want to try the Michael Jordan look to test this.

gigabyte
109 or 1,000,000,000 bytes (1 billion), or 230( 1,073,741,824) in binary.
1,000 megabytes, or a million kilobytes

One gigabyte can hold the text of over 1,000 books. That's a pretty decent-sized library bookshelf.

A compact disc holds about 3/4ths of a gigabyte. These were also available in the mid-1980's. By the mid-1990's recordable CDs were available for data storage, and by the late 1990's gigabyte hard disks were becoming common.

A gigabyte holds about 100 minutes of CD quality stereo music.

Single-sided DVDs hold from 4.7 gigabytes if recorded in one layer, or about 8.5 gigabytes if double-layered. Computer recordable DVDs are single-layered. Movie DVDs are usually double-layered.

One gigabyte holds about 25 minutes of DVD-quality video. A typical movie requires about 6 gigabytes of storage.

Silly analogy, part 4: a "gigahair", or one billion hairs side by side, be about 50,000 meters, or 50km. That's 30 miles. You'd have to find a town of about 10,000 people who were all willing to get haircuts at the same time if you wanted to try this.

terabyte
1012 or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes (1 trillion), which is slightly less than 240
1,000 gigabytes, or a million megabytes

Over 1,000,000 books. We're talking about a pretty large library here.

All the text in all the printed matter in the Library of Congress would fit in about 20 terabytes.

A terabyte would hold the contents of about 2,000 audio CDs in original uncompressed format.

A terabyte can hold over 160 DVD movies.

If Moore's Law* continues to hold when applied to data storage, we'll have one terabyte storage devices commonly available by 2010. They'll as portable as CDs and DVDs are now.

Silly analogy, part 5: a "terahair", or a trillion hairs carefully laid side by side, would be 50,000 km or 30,000 miles in length. That's 1 1/4 times around Planet Earth at the Equator (circumference 40,070 km). But of course, to try it, you'd have to persuade just about everyone in New York City and Chicago to get haircuts for you. That's about 10 million people times 100,000 hairs each.


petabyte
1015 or 1 quadrillion bytes. In binary, it's about 250.
1,000 terabytes. A million gigabytes. A billion megabytes.

Over one billion books. Are there even that many unique books in the history of printing?

Roy Williams Clickery** estimates 2 petabytes as the contents of all U.S. academic research libraries, and 200 petabytes as "all printed material". But of course those include duplicate copies!

A petabyte could hold about 2 million audio CDs, uncompressed. Compress them to 128kbps MP3 files, and you'll fit about 20 million CDs. This is in the range of all recordings ever made.

160,000 DVD movies would fit in a petabyte.

You could have a nice DVD-quality collection of all films ever released in about 2 petabytes. The Internet Movie Database lists about 250,000 theatrical releases, and about 325,000 including made-for-TV movies and other films.

So in about 4 or 5 petabytes, we fit ALL OF THE ABOVE. All books. All audio recordings. All movies. We can add more petabytes and start to add in all photographs ever taken. Then start adding everything ever broadcast on television...

Who knows when we'll run into physical limitations? But if Moore's Law continues to hold when applied to data storage, we'll have one petabyte storage devices that you can walk around with in your hand by around 2025.

"petahair": side by side, we're now at 50,000,000 km. Or 5x1010 meters. That's about the distance to Mars when it's at its closest position to Earth. It would take the hair of about 10 billion people, but we only have about 6 billion of us on this planet. So much for the "hair bridge" to Mars...



exabyte
1018 or 1 quintillion bytes. 260.
1,000 petabytes.

We could pretty comfortably fit everything ever broadcast or published within a few exabytes.

Clickery says 5 exabytes would hold all words ever spoken. The estimates for how many people have lived on Earth since the beginning are mostly around 100 billion ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ). Using that number (1011), we can compute that 1018 words divided by 1011 people is 107, or ten million. So we have room in 5 petabytes for ten million words from every person who has ever lived on this planet.

Using a generous average life expectancy of 45 years (we didn't reach an average of 50 until after 1900), that's an average of 16436 days per life. Divide that into ten millions words and you find that each person is allotted 608 words per day. That sounds rather low considering some people I know. On the other hand, early humans were probably not great conversationalists, and time spent as babies will bring the average down, also. But if you're more comfortable using an average of 6000 words a day, we're still estimating on the order of exabytes (50) if someone had bothered to record all those words.

"exahair": Would require the hair of 10 trillion people, and if only 100 billion people have ever lived on Earth, you'll see we're in trouble now. That would be 100 haircuts for everyone who's ever lived. Side by side, 1018 hairs, each measing .05mm wide, would span 5x1013 meters. Pluto's average distance to the Sun is about 5x1012 meters. Double that to get the distance between the farthest reaches of our Solar System, and you get 1x1013 meters. An "exahair" is five times that distance.

We're probably well beyond known physical limitations by now. But who knows what discoveries lurk in the future? If Moore's Law still continues to hold, that palm-size exabyte storage device would be ready by around 2040.

zettabyte
1021 or 1 sextillion bytes. 270. (Just counting this many bytes, we've finally exceeded the size of a 64-bit binary number, 264-1, for you computer geeks.)(And if you're reading this, you probably are...)(That means a 64-bit address space could address up to 16 exabytes? Yikes.)
1 zettabyte = 1 billion terabytes.

This is getting beyond comprehension.

With Moore's Law, we'd get there around 2055.

"zettahair": Side by side, this now stretches 5x1016 meters.

The speed of light is 186,287 miles per second. That's over 7 times around the Earth in one second. A light year is the distance light travels in one year. That distance is about 9.4x1015 meters.

Thus, a "zettahair" is more than 5 light years. The closest star to us, Alpha Centauri, is about 4 light years away.

yottabyte
1024 or 1 septillion bytes. 280.
That's a "yotta" bytes.

Moore's Law would have them for us by 2070.

Just in case you were wondering, a "yottahair" would be about 5,000 light years. (A "parsec" is 3.3 light years, so we could also say that a "yottahair" is just over 1500 parsecs. )

Our Milky Way galaxy is about 150,000 light years across. That's 30 yottahairs.

???
In case your curiosity overwhelms you, here are the terms for 1027, 1030, 1033, 1036,....
octillion, nonillion, decillion, undecillion, duodecillion, tredecillion,...."

24 Terabyte Server

http://www.prweb.com/releases/storage/server/prweb419513.htm

Jobless Rate Rises

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CNBC/Dispatch/060804markets.aspx

Hoshiko

http://www.icomsec.com/pandorabots/hoshiko.php

Japan

2005-
"Though perhaps years away in the United States, this long-awaited, as-seen-on-TV world -- think "The Jetsons" or "Blade Runner" -- is already unfolding in Japan, with robots now used as receptionists, night watchmen, hospital workers, guides, pets and more. The onslaught of new robots led the government last month to establish a committee to draw up safety guidelines for the keeping of robots in homes and offices. Officials compiled a report in January predicting that every household in Japan will own at least one robot by 2015, perhaps sooner."

[ Digg it ]
[ Slash it ]

Pharmacy Technicians

"HealthEast is paying about $3 million for the two robots and four MedCarousel machines but believes it is worth it because they will decrease medication errors and eliminate the need for pharmacists to count and sort tablets. Though $3 million may seem like a high price, the hospitals expect to make a return on their investment after only 18 months. HealthEast anticipates the robots' accuracy will translate into fewer adverse events in patients and less medication waste. Because of this HealthEast will likely hire fewer pharmacy technicians in the future."

Quote

"What is your advice to physicians on adapting to this Brave New World? How does this differ by specialty? What should they do today vs. plan for in 10, 20, 30 years? Any advice for pre-meds and medical school students?

The end game is embedding the expertise of doctors into silicon and software, much as ATMs did to tellers, or switches did to operators or electronic trading did to specialists at the NY Stock Exchange. I would rather be on the side of those affecting the change than fight the change. There will be enormous career opportunities for those that understand the changes ahead. The days of the family physician aren’t over, but will be radically different. Think of the change that took place with cardiac surgeons once stent procedures became the norm vs. bypass. Then multiply that by 1000 to cover the rest of the industry. You can ride the wave or get knocked over by it."

Timeline of quantum computing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_quantum_computing

"1970s
1970 - Stephen Wiesner invents conjugate coding.
1973 - Alexander Holevo publishes a paper showing that n qubits cannot carry more than n classical bits of information (a result known as "Holevo's theorem" or "Holevo's bound".
1975 - R. P. Poplavskii publishes "Thermodynamical models of information processing" (in Russian), Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk,115:3, 465–501 which showed the computational infeasibility of simulating quantum systems on classical computers, due to superposition principle.
1976 - Polish mathematical physicist Roman Ingarden, in one of the first attempts at creating a quantum information theory, shows that Shannon information theory cannot directly be generalized to the quantum case, but rather that it is possible to construct a quantum information theory which is a generalization of Shannon's theory.
[edit]
1980s
1980 -- Yuri I. Manin, publishes Computable and uncomputable (in Russian), Moscow, Sovetskoye Radio. This work exploits the exponential number of basis states needed to describe the evolution of a quantum system, and discusses the need for a theory of quantum computation that captures the fundamental principles of computation without committing to a physical realization.
1981
Richard Feynman in his talk at the First Conference on the Physics of Computation, held at MIT, observed that it appeared to be impossible in general to simulate an evolution of a quantum system on a classical computer in an efficient way. He proposed a basic model for a quantum computer that would be capable of such simulations.
Tommaso Toffoli introduced the reversible Toffoli gate, which, together with the NOT and XOR gates provides a universal set for quantum computation.
1984 - Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard employ Wiesner's conjugate coding for distribution of cryptographic keys.
1985 - David Deutsch, at the University of Oxford, described the first universal quantum computer. Just as a universal Turing machine can simulate any other Turing machine efficiently, so the universal quantum computer is able to simulate any other quantum computer with at most a polynomial slowdown.
[edit]
1990s
1991 - Artur Ekert invents entanglement based secure communication.
1993 - Dan Simon, at Université de Montréal, invented an oracle problem for which a quantum computer would be exponentially faster than conventional computer. This algorithm introduced the main ideas which were then developed in Peter Shor's factoring algorithm.
1994
Peter Shor, at AT&T's Bell Labs in New Jersey, discovered a remarkable algorithm. It allowed a quantum computer to factor large integers quickly. It solved both the factoring problem and the discrete log problem. Shor's algorithm could theoretically break many of the cryptosystems in use today. Its invention sparked a tremendous interest in quantum computers, even outside the physics community.
In December, Ignacio Cirac, at University of Castilla-La Mancha at Ciudad Real, and Peter Zoller at the University of Innsbruck proposed an experimental realization of the controlled-NOT gate with trapped ions.
1995
Peter Shor and Andrew Steane simultaneously proposed the first schemes for quantum error correction. This is an approach to making quantum computers that can compute with large numbers of qubits for long periods of time. Errors are always introduced by the environment, but quantum error correction might be able to overcome them. This could be a key technology for building large-scale quantum computers that work. These early proposals had a number of limitations. They could correct for some errors, but not errors that occur during the correction process itself. A number of improvements have been suggested, and active research on this continues. An alternative to quantum error correction has been found. Instead of actively correcting the errors induced by the interaction with the environment, special states that are immune to the errors can be used. This approach, known as decoherence free subspaces, assumes that there is some symmetry in the computer-environment interaction.
Christopher Monroe and David Wineland at NIST (Boulder, Colorado) experimentally realize the first quantum logic gate with trapped ions, according to Cirac and Zoller's proposal.
1996 - Lov Grover, at Bell Labs, invented the quantum database search algorithm. The quadratic speedup isn't as dramatic as the speedup for factoring, discrete logs, or physics simulations. However, the algorithm can be applied to a much wider variety of problems. Any problem that had to be solved by random, brute-force search, could now have a quadratic speedup.
1997 - David Cory, Amr Fahmy and Timothy Havel, and at the same time Neil Gershenfeld and Isaac L. Chuang at MIT published the first papers on quantum computers based on bulk spin resonance, or thermal ensembles. The computer is actually a single, small molecule, which stores qubits in the spin of its protons and neutrons. Trillions of trillions of these can float in a cup of water. That cup is placed in a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) machine, similar to the magnetic resonance imaging machines used in hospitals. This room-temperature (thermal) collection of molecules (ensemble) has massive amounts of redundancy, which allows it to maintain coherence for several seconds, much better than many other proposed systems.
1998
First working 2-qubit NMR computers demonstrated by Jonathan A Jones and Michele Mosca at Oxford University and at the same time by Isaac L. Chuang at IBM's Almaden Research Center together with coworkers at Stanford University and MIT.
First working 3-qubit NMR computer.
First execution of Grover's algorithm.
.

[edit]
2000s
2000
First working 5-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at the Technical University of Munich.
First execution of order finding (part of Shor's algorithm) at IBM's Almaden Research Center and Stanford University.
First working 7-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
2001 - First execution of Shor's algorithm at IBM's Almaden Research Center and Stanford University. The number 15 was factored using 1018 identical molecules, each containing seven active nuclear spins.
2002 - The Quantum Information Science and Technology Roadmapping Project, involving some of the main participants in the field, laid out the Quantum computation roadmap.
2002 - 11th UK conference on the Foundations of Physics, the Philosophy Centre, University of Oxford, September 9 - 13 sees the exposition of the theory of the Quantum Time Bomb.
2004 - First working pure state NMR quantum computer (based on parahydrogen) demonstrated at Oxford University and University of York.
[edit]
2005

Dr. Matthew Sellars of the Laser Physics Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia slowed down a light pulse to a few hundred meters per second. Slowing the light down allows information to be mapped on the light pulse, like memory in a conventional computer. To slow down the light, the researchers used a silicate crystal mixed with a rare earth metal called praseodymium. [1]
In a paper published in the November issue of the journal Nature Physics, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology reported experimental evidence that coherence also extends to the internal spin degrees of freedom in Bose-Einstein condensate atoms.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scientists demonstrate quantum entanglement of multiple characteristics, potentially allowing multiple qubits per particle.
Two teams of physicists have measured the capacitance of a Josephson junction for the first time. The methods could be used to measure the state of quantum bits in a quantum computer without disturbing the state. PhysicsWeb
In December, the first quantum byte, or qubyte, is announced to have been created by scientists at The Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the University of Innsbruck in Austria [2], with the formal paper published in the December 1st issue of Nature.
Harvard University and Georgia Institute of Technology researchers succeeded in transferring quantum information between "quantum memories" -- from atoms to photons and back again.
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) coaxed six atoms into spinning together in two opposite directions at the same time.
A scalable quantum computer chip for atomic qubits was built for the first time by researchers at the University of Michigan, offering hopes for making a practical quantum computer using conventional semiconductor manufacturing technology.
[edit]
2006

HP Labs' Quantum Information Processing Group begins finding ways to use photons, or light particles, for information processing, rather than the electrons used in digital electronic computers today. Their work holds promise for someday developing faster, more powerful and more secure computer networks.
Peter Zoller, from the University of Innsbruck in Austria, discovers method of using cryogenic polar molecules to make stable quantum memories.
Professor Winpenny at Manchester's School of Chemistry for the first time demonstrated how metal-containing rings that show properties necessary to act as qubits can be linked together using both organic and metal-organic fragments.
Researchers at Cambridge University and Toshiba announce a new quantum device that produces entangled photons.
Materials Science Department of Oxford, caged qubit in a buckyball (a Buckminster fullerene particle). This isolates a qubit to some extent, but not quite enough. The next step the researchers took was to apply the so-called ‘bang-bang’ method: the qubit is repeatedly hit with a strong pulse of microwaves which reverses the way in which it interacts with the environment. This allows the state of the qubit to be preserved. Bang-bang: a step closer to quantum supercomputers
Circuits built from high-critical-temperature superconductors might support quantum computing, according to experiments performed by physicists at Chalmers University of Technology (Goteborg, Sweden). Working with a group at Italy's University of L'Aquila, the physicists directly observed macroscopic quantum effects in high-critical-temperature Josephson junctions.
Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin use a laser trap to consistently capture and measure the same small number of atoms.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh develop a way to create semiconductor islands smaller than 10 nanometers in scale, known as quantum dots. The islands, made from germanium and placed on the surface of silicon with two-nanometer precision, are capable of confining single electrons.
Ohio University scientists discover how to make coherent light travel between quantum dots, facilitating communication in optical quantum computers.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign use the Zeno Effect, repeatedly measuring the properties of a photon to gradually change it without actually allowing the photon to reach the program, to search a database without actually "running" the quantum computer.
Vlatko Vedral of the University of Leeds and colleagues at the universities of Porto and Vienna found that the photons in ordinary laser light can be quantum mechanically entangled with the vibrations of a macroscopic mirror, no matter how hot the mirror is.
Professor Sam Braunstein at the University of York along with the University of Tokyo and the Japan Science and Technology Agency gave the first experimental demonstration of quantum telecloning. [3]
Professors at the University of Sheffield develop a means to efficiently produce and manipulate individual photons at high efficiency at room temperature. [4]
IBM scientists develop spin-excitation spectroscopy to manipulate the magnetism of individual atoms.
New error checking method discovered. [5]
Method developed to count single electrons. [6]
First 12 qubit quantum computer benchmarked. [7]
Two dimensional ion trap developed for quantum computing. [8]
Seven atoms placed in stable line, a step on the way to constructing a quantum gate, at the University of Bonn. [9]
Scientists learn how to synchronize quantum properties of electrons at ends of a nanotube. [10]"

Computers

http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/26/technology/futureoftech_kirkpatrick.fortune/index.htm

"In a short piece I wrote as part of a broader look at the future last September, I speculated..."Any kind of information is available anytime you want it," I wrote. "Simply speak a question, or even think it. You will always be connected wirelessly to the network, and an answer will return from a vast, collectively-produced data matrix. Google queries will seem quaint."

"Less than a year later such talk is almost routine in the futurist camp. Chris Taylor at Business 2.0 this week published "Surfing the Web with Nothing but Brainwaves." Taylor explains that already quadriplegics can play videogames, control robotic arms, and turn a TV on and off, using only their minds. They are connected to a computer with an implant that reads electrical patterns in the brain."

"Sony has already patented a game system that beams data directly into the brain without implants, reports Taylor.

In the future quantum-computing world which Schwartz and Koselka describe, we'd go way further. Computing power would be so great that we could easily have "network-enabled telepathy." We'd wear headbands with unimaginable computing power.

It's fascinating to consider some of the potential social and even political ramifications of such a turn toward ubiquitous information availability. The necessity to learn languages might disappear. If the devices necessary to participate in this information revolution were cheap enough, and the network truly ubiquitous and global, the economic playing field could be leveled. If information is power, everyone would have it. That's the kind of breakthrough the developing world needs.

Even moral codes and behavior might alter, if all that available information led to a profound transparency in human conduct."

"Computing is now so important that to talk of its future is inevitably to consider the future fate of mankind."

Network-based robot service soon a reality

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2006/07/31/200607310024.asp

"The Korean government says it will start developing "robots for social safety" beginning as early as late this year.

Robots for social safety are robots designed for public service such as security, night guards, military applications, fire suppression and work at prisons, according to the Ministry of Information and Communication."