By David L. Brown
In 1965 Gordon E. Moore, a co-founder of Intel Corp., wrote a paper in which he predicted that computing power would continue to increase exponentially, that is, doubling again and again. Moore noted that since the invention of transistors, about seven years before, the number of components (switches) that could be put on a single integrated circuit chip had doubled approximately every year. He claimed that that trend would continue “for at least ten years.”
Well, what has become known as “Moore’s Law” turned out to be an understatement. Since his paper appeared, computing power has continued to double, not every year but every 18 to 24 months, regular as clockwork. And while contrarians have often claimed the end is in sight, technology has continued to roll forward. Present estimates are that Moore’s Law will continue to hold true until at least 2015, and the promise of new methods coming over the horizon may extend the exponential expansion even further. And, oh yes, should quantum computing become a developed technology, it could go even faster and further to almost unimaginable levels of storage and computing power. In a few years, you may be able to hold the entire contents of the Library of Congress in one hand while scratching your head with the other.
Words are great things, and it is my personal belief that despite the old saying they are more powerful than pictures. Sometimes, though…well, here’s an example.
What you see here are two forms of computer storage, one from 30 years ago and one from today. On the left is an eight-unit IBM 3380 Disk System from 1980. Each of the eight units can hold 2.5 GB of data, so the total capacity of the array is 20 GB. The estimated cost of this system ranged to more than $1 million. It weighs about 4400 pounds. This was an advanced example of the cutting-edge technology that had put a man on the Moon.
On the right, by way of comparison, we see three 32 GB micro SD flash memory cards from today. Each card has more than half again more capacity than the complete IBM array from 30 years ago, and together the three cards could store nearly five times as much as the eight units of the old hard disk unit. The weight of a single flash memory chip is about half a gram, or 1/70th of an ounce. You can buy a 32 GB flash card for less than a hundred bucks, and Apple’s latest iPod and iPhone products, not to mention the new iPad, can be ordered with that much memory. Prices are sure to come down fast as new, even larger capacity products hit the market.