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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."

9 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.

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    2. Re:Just how big is a petabyte... by A55M0NKEY · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Avogadro's number is approx 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms per mol. If you were to store an an exabyte of data in one mol of material then each byte would have a budget of about 600,000 atoms. That may be doable...

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    3. 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).

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      * And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
    4. Re:Just how big is a petabyte... by Idarubicin · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Avogadro's number is approx 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms per mol. If you were to store an an exabyte of data in one mol of material then each byte would have a budget of about 600,000 atoms. That may be doable...

      It's eminently doable. That's 75,000 particles (atoms or molecules, depending on the species used) per bit--a huge number, still.

      The problem comes in storage and readout. If I have to flip bits manually using a scanning electron microscope, that's no good.

      On the other hand, let's assume that the work can be done optically, using a scanning laser. Take something the size of a vitamin E molecule; it absorbs visible light readily. Lying flat on a substrate, it would have a surface area (*very* roughly) of about 75 square angstroms. 75,000 of those would cover an area of about five million square angstroms. If arrayed over a square, that's about 240 nanometers on a side, or the diffraction limited spot size of a 480 nm wavelength laser.

      Yep, it could be done. A monomolecular layer on a flat substrate; about half a kilogram of molecule. Perfect--a petabyte for your laptop! But--that would cover a total square area of six or so square kilometers...somewhat awkward to scan with a single laser, and a bit clumsy to carry.

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    5. Re:Just how big is a petabyte... by NonSequor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But it has to do with more than marketing. That's just a fortunate coincidence which they are more than happy to make use of. Base 2 measurements are used for RAM because most RAM produced holds a power of 2 number of bytes. This is not true for many other storage devices, including hard disks.

      Personally, I think that defining a kilobyte as 1024 bytes is only useful very little of the time. In general it is less convenient than displaying units in terms of the number system that we have been taught to use since we were young.

      The ultimate goal of any software designer should be to make the software conform to the user's whims. Too often people lose sight of that and adapt themselves to the computer's arbitrary needs instead.

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  2. Weeee by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Funny

    "RHIC Computing Facility Crosses the 1 PB Mark"

    Tomorrow's story:

    "RHIC Computing Facility Slashdotted, Crosses the 2 PB Mark." Some will complain of dupes, others will say RTFA.

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    "Derp de derp."
  3. Interresting take from my co-worker by Captain+Rotundo · · Score: 3, Funny

    We are but a few miles from BNL, so I thought I'd mention this interresting fact to my co-workers, one of them said "I thought a 'peda-bite' had something to do with Michael Jackson" :)

  4. Time to FIGHT! by yardbird · · Score: 3, Funny

    We all must FIGHT Wal-mart and the other proponents of RHIC! This 1 PB milestone is yet another erosion of our privacy and will not.. what? Oh, never mind.

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