> > LOL didn't bill gates say something like that in relatin to the 640kb
> > memory size in dos???????
>
> Yes, he did (and he only used a safety-factor of 10).
>
> I had done a quick sanity check, but it must have been too quick.
> 2^64-sized hard disks in ~ 25 years seems a possibility (going on a
> 10^6 increase in 20 years). Rough guess, all that. I'm still not gonna
> loose any sleep over it...
There is a rule / prediction in computing that the power of computers will
double every 18 months. Ie if the top CPU today is 2Ghz in 18 months we will
have 4Ghz processors.
This rule has held pretty much true for the last 20 - 25 years. 16 -18 years
ago the first high end AT's had a 120 mg hard drive and 1 meg of memory. Do
the maths and that is about 11 doubles of power which gives you 2048 megs of
memory and 246Gb of Hard drive. This is about right, give or take a little
for where the commercial market is at or nearly is at. Processing power is
changing at about the same ratio.
If we have a 100Gb hard drive as standard in a desktop today that means we
will be looking at
hddSize = 100Gb * 2^( (25yrs * 12months) /18months)
= 100Gb *2^ 16 (give or take)
= 100Gb * 65536
= 6, 553, 600Gb
= 6,553.6 Tb (what is after terra byte? )
= 7.04E15 bytes
To accomodate this we would need to have a 53 bit architecture at least so we
will be safe with 64 bit architecture for at least the next 25 years. (unless
my maths or the rule is wrong). oops didn't do all my maths using 1024 ...
well it is close enough.
Shane
