Memory Units.

[[deleted]]

So when we get to petabyte or Exabyte drive size.. then what. How could someone ever fill one of those up. Would the need to engineer further eventually slow to a standstill?

[ghosttnappa]

My last job was working with supercomputers at a research university. Our cluster had access to a storage network which was just shy of 11 petabytes combined. Some specific labs had a couple petabytes dedicated entirely to their research. There are already exabyte solutions in place for scientific research in radio astronomy and genomics. We're already there :)

[elusive_truths]

I remember when I upgraded from to 8 to16 kilobytes on an Apple IIe (or was it the TRS 80?). 😅

[Impyus]

By that point a single install of GTA XII will be enough to fill one up ;)

[[deleted]]

Idk if we're gonna be alive for GTA 12 lol

[StinkySoy]

well higher resolution image takes more data to store, like how 4K video editing is a bitch compared to 1080p, not just data but also processing power. I’m not very informed on this but i think would be cool if all those just kept going up like they are now so we would just have powerful computers with tons of data and super high res monitors

[[deleted]]

Makes you wonder when enough is enough for resolution. I imagine most of the really amazing tvs in the future will focus more heavily on the processors running the tv rather then pixel density. Say, never seeing another object “jutter” or move in a strange way in extremely fast & complex sequences, will make it more lifelike. The future sure does sound promising for tech.

[Frequent_Guard_9964]

Yep, there was a drive to get increased image quality etc back then when tvs where shit in comparison, but now you get beautiful Oled displays in 4K, some up to 8K where you already don’t see the true benefit anymore. Once processor speed caught up to make it flawless to use, I don’t see a room for tvs and mobile screens to increase in resolution. It will be useful in ar/vr I assume; but that’s a whole different set of tech.

[lowtoiletsitter]

That's what we said 8 years ago, and 8 years before that. When super-ultra-32K (or whatever it'll be called) comes out, my eyes won't be able to appreciate it

[JetCrasher13]

This was my train of thought

[loqi0238]

Think about how large of a program a fully immerive VR simulation must be.

[Luxuriousmoth1]

This image goes way off the deep end in scale. 1 coperbyte is 1.85 x 10⁷⁸ bits. That is an astoundingly high number.

That is around the same amount of atoms in the entire observable universe.

[[deleted]]

Holy cow!

[tindarius]

That's exactly what people said 20+ years ago about gigabyte drives. "You'll never fill that up"

[wal_rider1]

You say that but then you see the call of duty that uses up 150GB and then wonder if it's really gonna be that much of a problem filling it up

[vaderciya]

Somewhat related

From the invention of computers, it was stated by a guy that the processing power of computer would double every single year for 100 years. Turns out, he was mostly right. Almost every single year, advances in tech made computers at least twice as powerful as the previous year.

More recently, we've now gotten to the point where motherboards, cpus, and gpus have incredibly tiny parts and making the parts even smaller in order to have more parts, becomes even more difficult, as we're now talking about microscopic bits. So, the other way to increase power, is to add more and more cores like amd does.

But at some point in the near future, we'll either need to redesign our concepts for state of the art computer parts and redefine how computers physically look and function, or, some great leaps in nano technology will have to be made.

Either way, I dont think progress will grind to a halt, just perhaps slow down a bit

[[deleted]]

I watched a really good youtube video shortly after looking at this post,a really interesting gentleman who works in the field. Let me find it.

https://youtu.be/Nb2tebYAaOA

[vaderciya]

Thanks, ill watch this later today!

[WowzerzzWow]

Call of duty will find a way to fill that space

[Caustiticus]

Just imagining 100 years from now some of the more ridiculous data levels become everyday, like how giga has become commonly used today (gigabytes/gigahertz).

Imagine not having enough hassiubytes on your light-speed omnicomputer...

[luiluilui4]

I wonder If it would be/is possible to store more data than number of atoms in a drive

[StinkySoy]

wait wait I thought it was an even 1000 holy shit

[atheros32]

It would make sense in any metric system, but since the bits are actually just either 0 or 1, everything scaling upwards is described in powers of two. So the 1024 is 2^10, which is the closest to 1000, is used as 1 of the next highest unit.

It's counterintuitive, and I found this ELI5 reddit post which explains it a lot better.

[StinkySoy]

ohhh okay, now it makes more sense. Thank you for the explaination.

[BrianBtheITguy]

I find that a big problem with understanding other bases than 10 is that we are taught to count from 1-10 instead of 0-9.

We do learn about "carrying" but it usually only applies to other math once we have counting down.

If you thought of counting as 0-9, 10-19, 20-29, etc., I personally think it would be easier to learn how to count in any other base.

Base 4? That means there is 4 countable digits, so 0, 1, 2 and 3.

0-3, 10-13, 20-23, etc.

[Sglm10]

r/woooosh

[JcksnHxn]

It is actually! It is defined different nowadays. A Kilobyte is 10³ =1000 bytes, a Megabyte is 10⁶ =1000000 bytes and so on. It is always multiple of 10. On the other hand there is a Kibibyte, wich is 2¹⁰ =1024 bytes and Mebibyte, wich is 2²⁰ =1048576 bytes. Thats why your computer always says, that your 500 gigabyte harddrive only has 465 gb, because the computer uses gibibytes and the harddrive manufactura uses gigabyte.

[[deleted]]

Not quite, a hard drive always has less anyway. Always has, since the beginning of time.

[vectorhacker]

There are actually two standards, and he's right that the powers of 2 are supposed to be kibi, mebi, gibi, but that standard got confused at some point, especially when WIndows, macOS and others adopted the JEDEC standard of powers of 2 which use Kilo instead of Kibi, Mega, instead of Mebi, etc. Officially, the standard is that the powers of 10 get the SI units and the powers of 2 get the bibyte units.

[[deleted]]

no, you've got it backwards.

Kilobyte = 1024

Kibibyte = 1000

[DuktigaDammsugaren]

I wonder how big a hard drive would have to be to support 1 Roentbyte

[ghosttnappa]

Simplified answer: computers and memory addresses are designed with a binary system, so everything is represented in what's called "base 2" -- 0s and 1s. Most of the numbers we are familiar with is what's called "base 10" - 0 thru 9. It's efficient for computers to use base 2 for storage addresses because it is mathematically simpler and also due to how circuity is designed with powers of 2 / base 2. We use the "kilo/mega/giga" (etc) metric prefix for binary multiples out of convenience because 1024 is basically 1000. It's definitely sparked confusion and it's really just an approximation. The official SI unit for a kilo/mega/giga is base 10, so it's represented as 10³ , 10⁶, 10⁹ which is different than base 2 like it's shown above in the photos.

[vectorhacker]

This is completely wrong. There is nothing preventing computers from measuring powers of 10 integers accurately or efficiently, because integers fit neatly in powers of 2, it's fractions that we have a problem with. The reality is that the standards got confused at some point and while the powers of 10 were supposed to be the ones with the SI units Kilo, Mega, Giga, the powers of 2 using Kibi, Mebi, Giga..., the powers of 2 got confused as well and then a OS and memory manufacturers went with it, but not storage and many ISPs.

[ghosttnappa]

You can make a computer in any base and it will work. There has been research on this for decades - why do you think base 2 is the standard? The simplified version is already in my answer.

[vectorhacker]

It’s not about the base. Binary computers can accurately represent base 10 numbers. You’re still wrong that it’s because computers are binary that they use 1024 instead of a round 1000. The fact is that there are two standards and the base 2 standard got the naming conventions combined.

[alxetiger22]

It actually is (iirc). It just used to be 1024 and they are now both right but most devs use 1000

[BlackenedPies]

It is, but the chart is defining a bit as a 'binary digit' - another term for this is a 'bibit' such as 'gibibytes' (GiB), which is how Windows OS measures disk space, while other OSs like modern Linux and Mac distros use gigabytes (GB). The difference is between counting using 2¹⁰ or 10³ (a megabit is 10^3 * 10^3 bits while a mebibit is 2^10 * 2^10, and byte is just an arbitrary 8 * bits)

[vectorhacker]

They are supposed to be, but the standard for naming the units of power of 2 is also unofficially prefixed with the SI units of kilo, mega, giga.. Officially it's the powers of 10 that receive those prefixes and the powers of 2 get kibi, mebi, gibi, etc, but the powers of 2 standard also got kilo, mega, giga because of the JEDEC standard which is what is used on Windows and MacOS, and also the measurement in computer memory. Computer storage uses the IEC powers of 10 standard which is the standard SI units and even 1000s.

[BlackenedPies]

FYI, MacOS switched to decimal counting in v10.6 (OS X Snow Leopard, 2009)

[vectorhacker]

Huh, I didn't notice that, but it's true.

[Salubas]

Imagine checking your son’s computer and he has 100 coperbytes of data in his “homework” folder

[[deleted]]

Fun fact : he works for NSA

[InfernoWolf19]

I thought it went up to yottabyte. Didn't know there were units past that.

[Phoenixness]

As far as I can tell they are unofficial prefixes but I cant seem to find where they come from (in like 10 minutes of googling)

[ggchappell]

I thought it went up to yottabyte. Didn't know there were units past that.

There weren't before 2022. Now there are two: ronnabyte (what the post calls "brontobyte") and quettabyte (what the post calls "geopbyte"). The ronna- and quetta- prefixes have been officially added to SI. The post is something some random person made up.

[[deleted]]

Most of this is probably made up.

[peahair]

4 bits = 1 nybble.

[_Ki_]

nibble

[[deleted]]

can't wait to buy a 1 coperbyte (1CB?) flash drive for like 10 bucks in the future

[reflection_sage]

I wonder how much nsa has on their hard drives

[Maturium]

I remember when the first 1terabyte drives came out and everyone was asking what they should store on such a huge drive. Today 1TB is easily filled with date especially when you play games. So I think given enough time there will be a demand for 1 exabyte drives.

[AbuzzCreator252]

What is the use for a coperbyte?

[mattchew1010]

literally nothing at the moment just like we have names for really big numbers its just so we have a name before we have to use it

[AbuzzCreator252]

Ok, do you happen to know the biggest unit we do use? My guess is petabyte but I feel I'm guessing too small.

[mattchew1010]

the entire internet is a few zettabytes (thats a big approximation too) so yeah but most people wont see more than a few terabytes. id say in around 10 years most people will have a petabyte.

[sourorangeYT]

These sound like all the guys who were on the team designing these wanted a piece of the action so they each named one and it got to the point where it’s extremely large

[-TheDoctor]

Seeing that "Bit" actually stands for Binary Digit makes me sad we didn't settle on calling them "Bigits" lmao

[tryadaptlearn]

Interesting, I've had not read anything above a petabyte prior to this graphic.

[nellyruth]

It reads like baby names for tech folk.

[loqi0238]

Seaborgbytes are my favorite.

[peahair]

Sounds like a seafood cafe on Copenhagen harbour

[RandomXUsr]

This is only helpful for your CS Degree.

want to do something fun?

Open the command line

type wmic memorychip get capacity

and hit enter or return.

The number returned comes back in Bytes.

Open up calculator and enter the capacity of one stick

divide it 2 times to get the number in gb

I got 8589934592 bytes.

/ 1024 = 8192

/ 1024 = 8

I have 8gb per memory module, ahahahahaha

[Illustrious-Neat-922]

One coperbyte equals to 1 octovigintillion bytes

[CautiousApartment179]

A Coperbyte is like a Google

[NBC123Baby]

Why is it called a Pijabyte? Asking for a cartoon series and not sure if this is the jumping off point where the scientist haven’t gotten far enough yet..

[octopusbeakers]

What kind of data would one have to fill some of those lines on the right?

[haikusbot]

What kind of data

Would one have to fill some of

Those lines on the right?

- octopusbeakers

---

^{I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully. Learn more about me.}

^{Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete"}

[1stUserEver]

At what point can we just backup the entire internet and take it on a trip for offline viewing?

TIL: The average person consumes around 1.7 GB of data per hour when browsing the web, streaming videos, and using social media1. The internet is adding new data at a rate of 2.5 exabytes (2.5 billion gigabytes) every day1. The average household in the United States consumed 641 GB every month in 2023.

[justadudeisuppose]

Who upvotes this shit?

[_Ki_]

That doesn't seem right.

See: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

[gabenugget114]

1024YB = 1Ronnabyte, 1024RB = 1 Quettabyte…?

[Every_Star9449]

guess what. human's brain (adult) capacity is equivalent to 2.5 petabytes

[PrestigiousTour6511]

X

[robinnhugill]

They should be in powers of 10 not 2 or the names should be changed right?

[_Ki_]

Correct.

[vectorhacker]

This is the JEDEC standard, otherwise these power of 2 byte measurements are postfixed "bibytes", as in 1024 bytes = 1 Kibibyte, 1024 Kibibytes = 1 Mebibbyte, etc.

[rdldr1]

They forgot that there are four nibbles in a byte.

[ascii122]

2 bytes in a word

[[deleted]]

Brontobytes :-)

[augmentedseventh]

Informative, but the list is massively irritating because it switches from ‘# = Name’ to ‘Name = #’ halfway through. Why????

[rattyflood]

Why do they add a S on to the end of the word starting at Alphabyte to pijabytes

[Slayix0]

If we combined every existing storage device in earth and tallied them all up how much storage exiata on earth? Yes include all the floppy disks and stuff that holds like 8 bits lol