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World's Servers Process 9.57ZB of Data a Year
CWmike writes "Three years ago, the world's 27 million business servers processed 9.57 zettabytes, or 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information. Researchers at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and the San Diego Supercomputer Center estimate that the total is equivalent to a 5.6-billion-mile-high stack of books stretching from Earth to Neptune and back to Earth, repeated about 20 times. By 2024, business servers worldwide will annually process the digital equivalent of a stack of books extending more than 4.37 light-years to Alpha Centauri, the scientists say. The report, titled 'How Much Information?: 2010 Report on Enterprise Server Information,' (PDF) was released at the SNW conference last month."
How many libraries of Congress is one Neptune height stack?
After Zetta (10^21) comes Yotta (10^24), but then what? Are SI going to come up with new prefixes for values 10^27 and up?
Lotta
Buncha
Loada
Tonna
That should hold us for a while.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
This site's is news for nerds, not news for Joe Sixpack.
That's precisely the reason it's measured in books and not in football fields.
A laptop HDD is about 3 cubic inches.
What's that in cubic centimetres?
A standard shipping container (40x8x8 ft^3) would hold about 1.5 million if they were packed tightly.
What's that in cubic metres?
That would be a train about 75 miles long.
What's that in km?
If each byte in 9.57ZB was a water molecule. It would be slightly less than a teaspoon.
You mean 5ml?
I think I'll go back to thinking of the distance to Neptune.