Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

RHIC Computing Facility Crosses the 1 PB Mark

Posted by michael on from the infoglut dept.

Martin writes "Brookhaven National Lab's RHIC Computing Facility (RCF) announced yesterday that the amount of data from the physics experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) crossed the 1 PetaByte mark. A mail that was sent around to the RCF users contained a GUI screen shot (which is removed from the mail archive) that showed the number of MegaBytes transferred as 1,000,400,143. The RCF web pages have some pictures of the tape silos that hold the data. RHIC and the experiments have been discussed on ./ a few times, look here, here, and here."

8 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Just how big is a petabyte... by MissMarvel · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thanks to the definitions page:

    A petabyte is a measure of memory or storage capacity and is 2 to the 50th power bytes or, in decimal, approximately a thousand terabytes.

    A terabyte is a measure of computer storage capacity and is 2 to the 40th power or approximately a thousand billion bytes (that is, a thousand gigabytes).

    A gigabyte is a measure of computer data storage capacity and is "roughly" a billion bytes. A gigabyte is two to the 30th power, or 1,073,741,824 in decimal notation.

    What's bigger?

    An exabyte (EB) is a large unit of computer data storage, two to the sixtieth power bytes. The prefix exa means one billion billion, or one quintillion, which is a decimal term. Two to the sixtieth power is actually 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes in decimal, or somewhat over a quintillion (or ten to the eighteenth power) bytes. It is common to say that an exabyte is approximately one quintillion bytes. In decimal terms, an exabyte is a billion gigabytes.

    1. Re:Just how big is a petabyte... by zelphior · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, data storage isn't measured in base 2. A megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes. The prefix mega indicating 10^6. A gigabyte is 10^9 bytes. A Terabyte is 10^12 bytes. A petabyte is 10^15, or one million billion bytes.

      --
      If you can read this then I forgot to check "Post Anonymously"
    2. Re:Just how big is a petabyte... by KnightStalker · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's probably worth mentioning that of course this is a redefinition of the traditional meanings and will probably irritate the same people who object to the phrase "Native American". But as in that case the traditional usage is entirely wrong. New standards are slowly being adopted. Although I rarely use them myself, I think using "mebi" etc. are preferable to coopting the SI prefixes. (Knuth doesn't like them).

      --
      * And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
    3. Re:Just how big is a petabyte... by Zathrus · · Score: 2, Informative

      one full-time guy to constantly replace the failed disks with new ones

      And this is why they don't. Tape is vastly more reliable than HDs are, particularly when you're talking about this much data. As long as you don't need realtime (or even near realtime) access to the data then tape is the better choice. Even with that much data a robotic tape server can serve you the data from any one tape with only a few seconds of access time plus however long it takes to spool the tape. Probably under 5 minutes for any given data segment.

      BTW, if you want a more accurate cost analysis, you have to go RAID. That'll jack your prices up considerably, and now large segments of your array will be down at any given time in order to restore the continuously failing drives.

    4. Re:Just how big is a petabyte... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      After the exabyte would be the zettabyte (10^21) then the yottabyte (10^24). As far as I know we have not defined any prefixes above yotta since there are very few things that it would be usefull for.

  2. "Mail" is a mass noun by Pingster · · Score: 2, Informative

    Some nouns can be counted, like "two sticks". Others cannot, like "rice".

    "A mail was sent around" is just as grammatically incorrect as "She ate a rice" or "That boy has a courage". The poster should have written "Mail was sent around" or "A message was sent around".

  3. Image link by infernow · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here's a direct link to the image, if you're feeling lazy.

    --

    that that is is that that is not is not

  4. screen shot *is* available in the archive by jpn · · Score: 2, Informative

    The screenshot attached to the email message is available here.