Pages: [1] 2   Go Down

Author Topic: Another Memory Breakthrough  (Read 11052 times)

Tim Gray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2002
    • http://www.timgrayphotography.com
Another Memory Breakthrough
« on: October 30, 2007, 03:49:58 pm »

Just when we thought 32gig CFs were big...

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous...7/10/ion_memory
Logged

gdeliz

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 23
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2007, 04:56:17 pm »

Quote
Just when we thought 32gig CFs were big...

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous...7/10/ion_memory
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=149630\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I wouldn't call it a breakthrough until it breaks through. Remember bubble memory?

George Deliz
Logged

Jonathan Wienke

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5829
    • http://visual-vacations.com/
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2007, 05:26:35 pm »

I know what I want for Christmas...

I think this is a possible hard drive killer technology; a raid5 server with a few hundred TB of storage and replaceable redundant sub-modules. A HD iPod with several thousand Blu-Ray discs stored in it would be freaking cool...
Logged

peter.doerrie

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 34
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #3 on: October 31, 2007, 11:37:37 am »

hmmm dont count on affordable 100 gig Camera Memory drives though. Until this becomes mainstream, a couple more years will pass...
Logged

sniper

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 670
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #4 on: October 31, 2007, 12:08:33 pm »

I argree with Jonathan, a few more years and it'll all be "solid state" HD's I suspect.  Wayne
« Last Edit: October 31, 2007, 12:08:50 pm by sniper »
Logged

Tim Gray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2002
    • http://www.timgrayphotography.com
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #5 on: October 31, 2007, 12:59:17 pm »

What's interesting is the cost performance trajectory.  I paid $1k cdn for a 1 gig Microdrive in 2001 - this new technology is at least some evidence that the exponential growth in value will continue.  Sure, it's a few years out, but current technology and recently commercialized technology will fuel growth for a few years, while this is being commercialized to take over when the growth capability of the existing technology peters out.

I remember an article in PC magazine in 1999 that basically suggested that high resolution digital photography whould have a tough time being commercialized, because it would take 50 "floppies"  (which weren't really "floppy" by that time")  to hold one image.
Logged

wolfnowl

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 5824
    • M&M's Musings
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #6 on: October 31, 2007, 11:27:03 pm »

Okay, so I'm dating myself and my computer background, but I remember when 1 GB was considered 'mass storage', available only to the largest corporations.

Bill Gates is reputed to have said '40MB of hard drive space is all you'll ever need'.  That may or may not be true, but the idea once was.

Mike.
Logged
If your mind is attuned t

I CHNGE

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #7 on: November 01, 2007, 03:48:51 am »

Quote
Okay, so I'm dating myself and my computer background, but I remember when 1 GB was considered 'mass storage', available only to the largest corporations.

Bill Gates is reputed to have said '40MB of hard drive space is all you'll ever need'.  That may or may not be true, but the idea once was.

Mike.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=149950\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

LOL...ok, well move over and pour me a glass of Ice Tea...'cause as long as we are reminiscing...I remember being the envy of friends and neighbors when I bought a PC that had a 80 MB hard drive...  

Terabyte Thumb Drives...waaaaaaaaaaay cool !!!
Logged

Jeremy Roussak

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 8961
    • site
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #8 on: November 01, 2007, 04:45:13 am »

Quote
Okay, so I'm dating myself and my computer background, but I remember when 1 GB was considered 'mass storage', available only to the largest corporations.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=149950\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
You're dating yourself?

When I was an undergraduate, there was ferocious debate about how the Cambridge University's IBM mainframe should put its newly-acquired fourth megabyte of main memory to use.

And the first Mac hard disk I used was 5MB!

Jeremy
Logged

Hank

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 679
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #9 on: November 01, 2007, 09:29:00 am »

Ah, the good old days!

When we first switched to desktop digital video editing, we had to daisy chain twelve 2GB hard drives to achieve the needed storage capacity.  I can't recall precisely how much we paid for our full array of hardware, but I'm betting the price of several new cars were involved.  

I recently gifted our then-editor two 16GB CF cards as a gag reminder of the era for her retirement.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2007, 09:29:56 am by Hank »
Logged

David Anderson

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 715
    • http://www.twigwater.com
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #10 on: November 01, 2007, 09:43:13 am »

I'll date myself as well.  

Anyone remember the Plato system of the late seventies early eighties ?
Online chats, forums, multi user games ect ect.
I did lessons on the system at an elementary school run by the university of Illinois - I think we were the first internet lab rats..  


I also remember getting my first Tera byte drive (1800 $ Aust.) and wondering how long it would take to fill up - about three weeks later I was wondering where to find the money for another !

Good thing there much cheaper now..
Logged

Eric Myrvaagnes

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 22814
  • http://myrvaagnes.com
    • http://myrvaagnes.com
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #11 on: November 01, 2007, 10:45:05 am »

I remember visiting the Harvard Mark One Computer. The din in the control room was deafening. I think it was all those hammers and chisels banging on the stone tablets used for storage.  

Actually, my own first computer was a Commodore 64 with no hard drive at all, only an external floppy drive. It was very hard to backup one floppy to another, because you had to keep swapping diskettes back and forth, and the drive would usually overheat before the copy was complete.  

Eventually I moved into the big time, with a PC-clone that had dual floppy drives plus a humongous 20 MB hard drive (twice as big as the IBM HD). I thought I was set for life.
Logged
-Eric Myrvaagnes (visit my website: http://myrvaagnes.com)

jjj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4728
    • http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #12 on: November 01, 2007, 10:51:12 am »

Quote
I argree with Jonathan, a few more years and it'll all be "solid state" HD's I suspect.  Wayne
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=149812\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
You can already get 64G SS HDs - used in laptops mostly. They'll probably overtake conventional Laptop HDs in size next year.
Logged
Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

gdeliz

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 23
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #13 on: November 02, 2007, 12:48:48 pm »

Here's something I posted to another forum a few days ago:
...The first configurable computer I owned was the MacII which I bought in 1988. The computer, with 1mb of Ram and a floppy drive cost $3500. I added 4mb of Ram for $1600, a 100mb hard drive for $900, a 13’’ monitor for $800, and an 8bit video card for $350. Total cost $7150.

At 1988 prices the 8Gig of Ram in my current MacPro would be worth about $3.2million and the 2Tb of hard drive capacity would be worth about $15million . Based on the price and performance of the Cray Y-MP supercomputer of 1988, my MacPro motherboard (with the floating point performance of 17 Y-MPs) would be worth about $55million, bringing the total value of my system to $73.2 million.

Now suppose that, back in 1988, I had expressed a fantasy about having such a $75million computer system someday , someone had asked me what I would use it for, and I had answered that I would use it primarily to develop and print my photographs? LOL

George Deliz
Logged

meyerweb

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 163
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #14 on: November 02, 2007, 09:14:42 pm »

Quote
Okay, so I'm dating myself and my computer background, but I remember when 1 GB was considered 'mass storage', available only to the largest corporations.

Bill Gates is reputed to have said '40MB of hard drive space is all you'll ever need'.  That may or may not be true, but the idea once was.

Mike.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=149950\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Actually, I think what Bill said was that 640KB of memory was all anyone would ever mean. I can recall discussion about why anyone would even need 640KB--74KB was plenty.
Logged

meyerweb

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 163
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #15 on: November 02, 2007, 09:19:13 pm »

Quote
You can already get 64G SS HDs - used in laptops mostly. They'll probably overtake conventional Laptop HDs in size next year.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150047\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

But hard drives keep getting bigger and cheaper, too. 750GB SATA's are only a few hundred dollars. By the end of next year 2 Terabyte arrays will probably be in the neighborhood of $500. And 500GB laptop disks won't be far behind. I think solid state memory will continue to be much more costly than disk storage for quite some time to come. So it'll be used where power consumption is key, and disks still used in most other scenarios.

Do you NEED that much in a laptop?  Well, it wasn't too long ago we thought 640MB of RAM was plenty.
Logged

meyerweb

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 163
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #16 on: November 02, 2007, 09:22:43 pm »

Quote
I remember an article in PC magazine in 1999 that basically suggested that high resolution digital photography whould have a tough time being commercialized, because it would take 50 "floppies"  (which weren't really "floppy" by that time")  to hold one image.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=149824\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

1999?  Sure it wasn't 89? I already had two 300MB hard disks in my system well before '99, so I can't believe PC Mag was still thinking floppies would be the storage medium of choice.
Logged

Tim Gray

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2002
    • http://www.timgrayphotography.com
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #17 on: November 02, 2007, 09:24:35 pm »

Quote
1999?  Sure it wasn't 89? I already had two 300MB hard disks in my system well before '99, so I can't believe PC Mag was still thinking floppies would be the storage medium of choice.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150327\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


missed it by 10 years   89 was right...
Logged

meyerweb

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 163
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #18 on: November 02, 2007, 09:28:14 pm »

Quote
You're dating yourself?

When I was an undergraduate, there was ferocious debate about how the Cambridge University's IBM mainframe should put its newly-acquired fourth megabyte of main memory to use.

Jeremy
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=149991\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You young whippersnapper! When I was an undergrad, my college had an IBM mainframe with vacuum tubes and magnetic core storage. I can't remember how much memory it had, but I'm sure it was no more than 16MB.  I tempted to say 4 MB.

(That should be 16K and 4K of memory, not MB)
« Last Edit: November 04, 2007, 01:20:44 pm by meyerweb »
Logged

Eric Myrvaagnes

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 22814
  • http://myrvaagnes.com
    • http://myrvaagnes.com
Another Memory Breakthrough
« Reply #19 on: November 02, 2007, 10:01:30 pm »

Well I had the honor of playing Spacewar on one of the very first PDP-1 computers in about 1962. The PDP-1 cost $120,000 with the standard 4K of 18-bit memory (you coded in octal instead of hexadecimal).

That was an amazing machine.  
Logged
-Eric Myrvaagnes (visit my website: http://myrvaagnes.com)
Pages: [1] 2   Go Up