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RE: The Growth of Storage

SQLRNNR — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:07:14 GMT

I think 1tb ram in a laptop is <= 10 yrs away. Can't wait buahahaha.

RE: The Growth of Storage

P Jones — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 04:12:37 GMT

Back in the early 1980's in the UK our DEC PDP11's had 32K of memory and you had to write your own memory management system to swap in and out to pack more in. The washing machine sized drives were 5Mb RL01 removable disks (later we got double sided 10Mb RL02) and sending updates to a customer involved someone driving to the railway station, sending one of these disks by Red Star parcels (remember them?) and the customer collecting the disk at the other end. Then we had to talk them through applying the update. Now it's just so easy to use remote access to connect in, transfer the files and run the update! I remember going to DEC in Reading at that time and seeing email for the first time between their offices in the UK and USA and now it's taken for granted. It's not just when we'll get huge drives but in what form - I see RAID,SAN and development of security/DR technologies are going to be the more important thing for a while yet.

RE: The Growth of Storage

Howard Perry — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 16:10:03 GMT

I believe that the advent of cheap SSDs will make the distinction between RAM and disks somewhat blurred.Portable devices have the potential to eliminate the need for workstations/laptops etc. The Cloud has been mentioned but whether we shift storage and processing there will depend on how fast the speed of communications improves. I think there is also a limit on how small a device, one can comfortably operate

RE: The Growth of Storage

bkmead432 — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:09:36 GMT

I think that if we are looking 20 years in the future, we will probably have all the necessary chips implanted in our bodies and we will be wired into the cloud for storage through some wireless protocol that hasn't been invented yet. We will have to initially undergo surgery to wire in the socket which would allow users to plug in a new chip for an upgrade or repair. The poor will still use basic hardware with a bazillion gigs of whatever. (We will still have stupid users).

RE: The Growth of Storage

djackson 22568 — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:50:09 GMT

I don't think it will be that long for RAM. Disk, well there is a huge difference between TB and PB, so I don't know if there will be that much space on a computer anytime soon.For Ram, I expect to see TB ranges within the next 5 years on servers. We currently purchase blades with 96GB or more, so that is only a factor of 10, right? Laptops and desktops will take longer, but I would not be surprised to see that on a laptop/desktop in 10 years.Storage isn't the real issue. You can always add drives. RAM and processor are the issues for performance, and given the incredibly poor design of software today, with the addition of excessive advertisements that lock up even new machines, these are the areas that need to have the focus.

RE: The Growth of Storage

david.beav — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:31:23 GMT

I had a external 5MB drive on my Apple /// in 1982, priced at $3,500. External 1TB drive today is $100. The math is fun: you'd need 200,000 of those Apple drives, for $700 million, to get 1TB. Seagate probably never even made 200,000 of those drives.I agree with others... what will we do with all the space that the march of technology will surely bring us? As disk/memory has grown, our file types have gotten bigger... from text (5MB was enough to store all my word processing docs), to graphics, to music, to video. But what's beyond video? Is it Big Data... will we routinely keep 1TB databases on our local workstations?But to the actual question Steve asked... extrapolate this chart: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hard_drive_capacity_over_time.png]hard_drive_capacity_over_time[/url] and you get a 100TB drive in about 2019 (February 19 to be exact).

RE: The Growth of Storage

jasona.work — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:02:02 GMT

I'm going to say that it's likely we'll see this within the next 10 years.While everyone is pointing out that more and more of this can be pushed into the cloud, to VMs handled by providers, that's more something I think would benefit devs. It's the home users who will be looking for powerful boxes. Not because they'll need them (although some might,) but because the marketdroids have told them they need them.Software publishers will also drive the need, to some extent (although MS is starting to push Office365, the "rental" Office in the cloud) because they'll push an existing machine to its limits, then a little further (Crysis?)The PC makers will go with it, because they'll have clients who need such machines for specialized purposes (I need to be able to handle a 3TB database, my only Internet connection is via a slow satellite connection, and they're not likely to run fiber to McMurdo Station anytime soon so I can't have this in the cloud,) because it's cheaper to build thousands of the same machine, then to do one- or a few-off runs.BTW, first computer: TI99/4a, followed by an Apple][e, then an IBM PC clone (good time loading Wing Commander from 5.25" floppies, all 20+ of them)Jason

RE: The Growth of Storage

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:01:42 GMT

[quote][b]nycdotnet (1/18/2013)[/b][hr]...Full HD video is something like 10GB/hr - Let's say in the future we have Quad HD (2160p) 60 FPS 3D movies, that's 160 GB per hour or 320 GB per movie on average (with movies trending longer). Is there any practical purpose to be able to cache six such movies in RAM on a worstation especially considering that network pipes and local storage speeds will also be expanding over time?[/quote]Yes.network pipes expand greatly in some places, not others. The same for bandwidth. I live in a rural county. Most of us have DSL, satellite, something around a 1Mbps downstream speed. There isn't a reason for anyone to invest more. Even cellular isn't great. Huge sections of the country are like this and unless there is some government push/incentive/regulation like with the original copper telephone push to get services expanded, there isn't a profit in doing so. It doesn't have to be wire, but even wireless has limited value. Companies concentrate on relatively few places to expand. Verizon has limited FIOS. perhaps thinking that wireless is better, but I suspect it will be a long time before large scale 20MBps is available wirelessly to most of the country. I could be wrong, but cable/fiber people laugh at investing in many places where you don't have high densities of people. Even then they minimally invest to get some people high speed, but others with lots of contention.

RE: The Growth of Storage

crmitchell — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:00:25 GMT

realistically it isn't going to be anywhere near 20 years. If it was only the technology of memory/storage - I'd put it at about 5 years.Currently an entry level PC has 4Gb RAM and 2Tb disk - a high end PC will have 16-32 Gb RAM and 4-10Tb disk.One problem with RAM is that current processors can only support 32Gb RAM so to progress beyond that we need a new processor architecture - i.e. move from 64bit to 128 bit or start working on a *lot* more processor cores- The parallella project is certainly a start in that direction.As for disk space we could easily be at 1000Tb capacity drives being mainstream in 2-3 years but these specs are more driven by gamer requirements than business and that is focussing more on GPUs at present so I would expect a plateuing of CPU/Memory/Disk over the next year before games start becoming CPU or Memory bound again at wich point I would expect the CPU/Memory requirements to start growin again.I'll go with 1Tb ram being available 5-7 years, 1000Tb hard drive 3-4 years, 1000Tb SSD or equivalent 5-7 years

RE: The Growth of Storage

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:57:31 GMT

[quote][b]William Vach (1/18/2013)[/b][hr]I think that before we get there storage/RAM on a laptop will become a moot point. We will have virtual machines in a cloud that we will access with a tablet/phone/desktop like device from wherever we are. The virtual machines will have whatever we need or have contracted for and can grow or shrink based on our usage.[/quote]Yes and no. The grow/shrink is for scalable applications. However, there are potentially things we do that aren't so scalable and we'd be limited to the size of one VM. Maybe that will change, especially as developers get better writing scalable software.However we do need some sort of backup system, and the cloud doesn't do it now. We need a way to keep things private, or secure, in a way the cloud doesn't offer.Lots of cloud services are amazing and I think many will work inside companies, but lots will also require the "cloud" infrastructure to exist inside a company data center. For legal/security/etc purposes. I want the same idea of PaaS, but on my company's servers at some scale.

RE: The Growth of Storage

Miles Neale — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:55:48 GMT

When I first started there were not laptops and no PC's and for that matter no Windows or Microsoft, and DOS was an IBM mainframe OS. The first computer I worked with hands-on was an IBM 360-20 followed by an IBM System 3 Mod 6. The resources of each were very small when compared to today's array of hardware. When will we see RAM and storage on a laptop hit those levels? Probably within 5 years. Do we need it? Not with what we know now, but what we know and use then may dictate a smaller, better, and faster environment. The hardware of today far exceeds what we thought we would need 10 years back, and looking forward it is the same thing. We cannot imagine it but it is going to happen. We have just really started tapping into the real world of robotics and AI and when we do truly get into those areas and start to put it in the hands of the masses, things will grow. Years back we did not think that we would ever see robotics so small that they could crawl through and analyze the human bloodstream, and we could only dream of advanced pattern recognition in real-time. But now that those things are happening we take them for granted. It takes new technology and smaller, better. faster to get there. And as we reach out to the frontier again into new areas of the applied science of technology only God and the future know what will be developed, and researched to make those new things happen. The only reasons we do not have it today is that we are only developing the needs for it today, the nano-technology that generation of hardware is either too expensive or that mass production of it just has not geared up yet, and what it costs to supply that hardware today is beyond what the consumer is willing to pay. But that day will come.Again I think we will get there, probably within 5 years. Am I a dreamer? I really hope so, I would hate to surrender to become a fossil.M.

RE: The Growth of Storage

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:54:04 GMT

[quote][b]-=JLK=- (1/18/2013)[/b][hr]I have no idea when we'll get there, but I have no doubt we will, though I truely suspect we will see a return to dumb terminals and huge servers, if not mainframe type servers.While we are dating ourselves, my first computer in a High School classroom was 16KB memory and a cassette tape drive, afterwards I graduated to a Commadore 64 for my personal computer, and my first work computer still had only HD 3.5 floppy drives.[/quote]Not sure, though a little. Cloud services (PaaS, not IaaS), is similar to mainframes, but more scalable and capable, IMHO.

RE: The Growth of Storage

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:52:15 GMT

[quote][b]aberman 63872 (1/18/2013)[/b][hr]My first computer (apple 2) had 64K of memory.Hardware specs for mobile devices will mean less and less as move computing moves to the cloud. My 6 year old PC works just fine for running web apps. You can get 1 TB of memory for your laptop and it won't be any faster than my home PC for most things.[/quote]Yes and no. Win 7 was much faster, IMHO, than previous versions, which seemed to have kept pace with hardware. I hate Word, because it's slow. Unlike Notepad, EditPlus, Notepad++ and more that snap open.There's a return to some software that is working better. Also, I can definitely do more on my quad core desktop than on my old laptop and it ran better for some software. Some was just as slow as it was 10 years ago, albeit prettier and with more features.

RE: The Growth of Storage

David.Poole — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:10:42 GMT

Apparently if you could send an iPad2 back to 1997 it would be the 7th most powerful computer on earth.My first computer was a Commodore Vic20 with 3.5K RAM and a 2Mhz 8 bit chip.I've got 8GB RAM in my works laptop and some of our devs have 16GBMy previous works machine originally had 2GB RAM upgraded from 1GB. In 4 years our developer workstations have gone from 1/2 GB to 16GB.It isn't a simple mathematical progression, you can't extrapolate out and say that in 6 years they'll be at 1TB.The thing that drove the need for increased RAM was the practise of continuous integration. The need to be capable to build and run the entire system and its tests on your local workstation at the same time that you are writing office documents, answering emails and using a browser.For us we are also moving to video conferencing so webcams are driving the need for more power.There is only so much a single individual can do so unless we end up with interaction via holodeck I can't see the push for increased workstation capacity increasing indefinitely.Then there is the renting of processing power in the cloud as has already been mentioned. Will I even need high powered workstations in the future?

RE: The Growth of Storage

don.kennedy — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 08:28:51 GMT

[font="Verdana"][size="8"][/size][/font]How much can I save in 20TB?Back in the day - say 1975 - a washing machine sized DEC hard disk managed to store 32MB on its seven platters. Two of these units managed a $130M/year beer wine distributor easily with proper maintenance and data control.Why would I, a developer, need a 20TB drive... to store anything and everything I'd ever captured, been trapped into capturing (IE pop-ups please), written, received, passively created in spare moments from and to time infinitum.... yes?If you are in an LOB at Wells Fargo all the shiny huge servers with tons of RAM chips and flash chip laden SSD's can contribute to shaving the bottom line... but otherwise - start clearing out the junk people!

RE: The Growth of Storage

jcrawf02 — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 07:50:04 GMT

RE: The Growth of Storage

myhreja — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 07:34:40 GMT

I would agree with JLK regarding dumb terminals. With the cloud and handheld devices out there, I don't think our home PCs or laptops will see a need to be pushed to those numbers. Do we see major software corporations researching/developing new applications that will require that kind of hardware in our home PCs/laptops? History says Yes, but I'm a skeptic and if I had to pick how long it will take; I would say much longer than 20 years.

RE: The Growth of Storage

nycdotnet — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 07:34:09 GMT

I would like to say that this will never happen, but I believe that "workstations" will only get 2 TB of RAM only when it becomes economically sensible to stop producing chips with smaller capacities (servers or scientific/math calculations are obviously a different story). We definitely can joke about the old "640k should be enough for anyone", but at some point there is no practical reason for more RAM on a "workstation" for example:Full HD video is something like 10GB/hr - Let's say in the future we have Quad HD (2160p) 60 FPS 3D movies, that's 160 GB per hour or 320 GB per movie on average (with movies trending longer). Is there any practical purpose to be able to cache six such movies in RAM on a worstation especially considering that network pipes and local storage speeds will also be expanding over time?

RE: The Growth of Storage

blawrence 72616 — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 07:31:10 GMT

I think I was sort of saying that! Sure beats clay tablets and sticks!

RE: The Growth of Storage

William Vach — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 07:29:00 GMT

I think that before we get there storage/RAM on a laptop will become a moot point. We will have virtual machines in a cloud that we will access with a tablet/phone/desktop like device from wherever we are. The virtual machines will have whatever we need or have contracted for and can grow or shrink based on our usage.

RE: The Growth of Storage

batgirl — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 07:04:53 GMT

[quote][b]-=JLK=- (1/18/2013)[/b][hr]While we are dating ourselves, my first computer in a High School classroom was 16KB memory and a cassette tape drive, afterwards I graduated to a Commadore 64 for my personal computer, and my first work computer still had only HD 3.5 floppy drives.[/quote]You win! My IBM XT had a 5.25 floppy drive and it took 3+ boxes of of them to install my accounting software. Fun times....

RE: The Growth of Storage

-=JLK=- — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 06:57:31 GMT

I have no idea when we'll get there, but I have no doubt we will, though I truely suspect we will see a return to dumb terminals and huge servers, if not mainframe type servers.While we are dating ourselves, my first computer in a High School classroom was 16KB memory and a cassette tape drive, afterwards I graduated to a Commadore 64 for my personal computer, and my first work computer still had only HD 3.5 floppy drives.

RE: The Growth of Storage

aberman 63872 — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 06:56:17 GMT

My first computer (apple 2) had 64K of memory.Hardware specs for mobile devices will mean less and less as move computing moves to the cloud. My 6 year old PC works just fine for running web apps. You can get 1 TB of memory for your laptop and it won't be any faster than my home PC for most things.

RE: The Growth of Storage

batgirl — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 06:25:29 GMT

I regret aging myself by saying that my first home pc had 640kb RAM (that's all we'll ever need right? :-D) and 20MB hard drive. I constantly had to delete one application to make room for another as I was learning my way through them. I expect it to take less than 20 years.

RE: The Growth of Storage

blawrence 72616 — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 06:23:36 GMT

When we get there. ... soon, very soon. Storage? What Storage?

RE: The Growth of Storage

Knut Boehnert — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 04:21:00 GMT

My guess is currently 20 years.Unless there is a full breakthrough on optical / biological storage mechanisms that just are started in research.That technology has the potential to reset Moore's law.Also that processing is only limited by the speed of light / speed of signal emitting we can build.

The Growth of Storage

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:11:02 GMT

Comments posted to this topic are about the item [B]The Growth of Storage[/B]