Storage Effect

In the Petabyte Age, new applications are redefining “Big Storage”

Think you’re with it now that you say “terabytes” instead of “gigabytes”?  You’re behind the curve.  For some applications, a petabyte is not nearly enough.

Wired Magazine says we’re living in the Petabyte Age.  One example: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, taking a billion “photos” of protons a second with each of six detectors. 

The LHC, expected to run 24/7 for most of the year, will generate about 10 petabytes of data per second. That staggering flood of information would instantly overwhelm any conceivable storage technology, so hardware and software filters will reduce the take to roughly 100 events per second that seem most promising for analysis. Even so, the collider will record about 15 petabytes of data each year, the equivalent of 15,000 terabyte-size hard drives filled to the brim.

Just one of many extreme data examples in this great read.  Soon, petabytes for all! Remember, scientists used to get giddy over 5 megabytes.  Dell’s David Graves at Inside IT says ”More storage please!”

Better learn to spell exabyte.