“A Room with Computer Storage of 1 Yottabyte”

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Very few things in life are certain, and this is one of those things; people are going to create mountains of data from here on out. There really is no turning back. Businesses have always revolved around data. And everything data related is converting from paper to digital. When you add together business data and personal data with social media data, artificial intelligence data, and things like cryptocurrency data, this equals a tsunami of data being created daily. Forbes has reported that 90% of all of the world’s data that has ever been created has been during the previous two years alone. Wow! How are we going to manage this?

Where is all of this data stuff kept?  ” Stored in the Cloud” is not as atmospheric as it sounds. Cloud storage is actually large rooms full of multiple computer servers for remote networks to access. Data storage can be either cloud storage (remote), or onsite, such as on your laptop. Regardless of where the data is stored, it takes up physical space somewhere. It requires some sort of real estate, whether it be a spec on your computer motherboard or large warehouses full of servers. And we are obviously going to need more and more.

Technology has evolved significantly when it comes to computer data storage and continues to do so. Consider this: the NASA Apollo Guidance Computer used for the Apollo launches during the 1960’s and 1970’s…

The Apollo Guidance Computer used on the Apollo missions had the following data storage capacities:

• 72KB of read-only core rope memory for storage of software
• 2KB of RAM for temporary data storage during operation

The 72KB of rope memory was woven by hand and contained the software for guidance, navigation and control of the spacecraft. This memory was hard-wired and couldn’t be changed once it was manufactured.

The 2KB RAM provided temporary storage for variables, intermediate results and other short-term data needed during operation. This memory was erasable and reprogrammable.

So in summary, the total data storage capacity was very small by today’s standards – just 74KB in total. This was extremely limited, but it was sufficient for the computational needs of the Apollo Guidance Computer at the time given the much more primitive nature of software and programming in the 1960s. The limited capacity posed a major challenge for NASA programmers to fit all the required programs into this tiny amount of memory.

[Claude.ai]

I next asked Claude.ai how fast the Apollo Guidance Computers were and, in short, they were 2.048 MHz. 

Today, you can buy a 5 terabyte external storage drive that could easily fit in a small backpack for less than $125.00. Sometimes its hard to put these metric sizes into perspective, so let’s take a look at the different tiers:

Data storage capacity is measured in a range of units, each representing a different level of size. Here’s a breakdown of the most common levels:

Basic Units:

• Byte: The fundamental unit, consisting of 8 bits and representing a single character. (One letter, for example)
• Kilobyte (KB): 1,000 bytes (About a small document)
• Megabyte (MB): 1,000 kilobytes (A few photos)
• Gigabyte (GB): 1,000 megabytes (A typical movie)

Larger Units:

• These units are based on the decimal system, except for the binary-based “kibibyte” (KiB), “mebibyte” (MiB), etc., which are sometimes used for precision in technical contexts.
• The actual capacity of storage devices can be slightly smaller than advertised due to formatting and system overhead.
• The level of storage you need depends on your specific usage, with everyday personal use requiring much less than businesses handling large datasets.

I hope this provides a clear overview of the different levels of data storage capacity! Let me know if you have any further questions or need more details on specific units.

               [Google Bard]

Another way to look at this:

1 byte = 10¹ = 1 byte

1 kilobyte = 10³ = 1,000 bytes = 1 thousand bytes

1 megabyte = 10⁶ = 1,000,000 = 1 million bytes

1 gigabyte = 10⁹ = 1,000,000,000 = 1 billion bytes

1 terabyte = 10¹² = 1,000,000,000,000 = 1 trillion bytes

1 petabyte = 10¹⁵ = 1,000,000,000,000,000 = 1quadrillion bytes

1 Exabyte = 10¹⁸ = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 = 1 quintillion bytes

1 zettabyte = 10²¹ = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes = 1 sextillion bytes

1 yottabyte = 10²⁴ = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,bytes = 1 septillion bytes

It is more convenient, and understandable, to use nice round numbers to explain things. But when it comes to bytes of data storage, it become a little more complicated. 

At the atomic level, if you will, a bit is represented by either a 0 or a 1, which is technically indicated as an open or closed position, or “on or off”, of an electrical circuit in a computer processor. This makes the building blocks of a byte, the bit, one of two choices – it is a binary system.

{Fun fact: stringing four bits together is called a nibble}.

So, the math of data size is actually based on powers of 2 because of this binary use of 0’s and 1’s to create data. In the well-rounded metric system of measurements, a kilo(whatever) = 1000(whatevers). The nearest power of 2 to reach 1000 is 2¹⁰ (2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2), which actually equals 1024. This isn’t really important to consider when needing to store small amounts of data, but becomes an issue when needing to store large amounts of data, as you can see below:

Here are the number of bytes in each level of data storage:

1. Bit: 1 bit
2. Byte: 8 bits or 1 byte
3. Kilobyte (KB): 1,024 bytes
4. Megabyte (MB): 1,048,576 bytes or 1,024 kilobytes
5. Gigabyte (GB): 1,073,741,824 bytes or 1,024 megabytes
6. Terabyte (TB): 1,099,511,627,776 bytes or 1,024 gigabytes
7. Petabyte (PB): 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes or 1,024 terabytes
8. Exabyte (EB): 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes or 1,024 petabytes

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions. 

[Microsoft Bing Copilot]

Are there any sizes of data storage larger than a yottabyte?

The largest standard size of data storage is currently the yottabyte (YB), which is equivalent to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes ¹². However, there are other units of data storage that are larger than a yottabyte:

1. Brontobyte (BB): A brontobyte is equal to 1,024 yottabytes or 1,125,899,906,842,624,000,000,000 bytes ³.
2. Geopbyte (GB): A geopbyte is equal to 1,024 brontobytes or 1,152,921,504,606,846,976,000,000,000 bytes ⁴.

These are just some of the units of data storage that are larger than a yottabyte. It’s worth noting that these units are not yet widely used and are mostly theoretical at this point ¹. I hope this helps!

[Microsoft Bing Co-plot]

A few interesting points of reference: 

The largest single data storage unit today, according to Microsoft Copilot, is the ExaDrive DC by Nimbus Data and can hold 100 terabytes.

Large online presences, such as Amazon and Facebook, hold data in the 100’s of Petabytes on their server farms. Google processes more then 20 petabytes of data daily.

There are many types of data centers, but a typical large data center is an approximately 100,000 square feet warehouse with approximately 100,000 computer servers. The data capacity depends on the storage unit size; does each server have 5 terabytes of storage or the largest 100 terabytes of storage per server?  We’ll talk about data centers in the future I’m sure.

Several sources estimate the entire global data size needing storage will increase to between 175 zettabytes to 200 zettabytes by 2025. 

To shed light on where we, as a planet, are heading when it comes to data creation and use, I couldn’t say it any better than the blog article https://www.explodingtopics.com/blog/data-generated-per-day

Thanks for visiting. Please stay tuned.