256 bit CPUs should be enough
Information Sites | Other Pages 		  A look at the increases in computer memory and future limits. Also, an extended system of Units. Kilo Mega Giga Tera Peta Exa Zetta Yotta Xona Weka Vunda Uda Treda ... Luma from Jim Blower's.    


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Other Pages - Not to do with Plexos. Robots, art, Segway, various topics
A look at the increases in computer memory and future limits. Also, an extended system of Units. Kilo Mega Giga Tera Peta Exa Zetta Yotta Xona Weka Vunda Uda Treda ... Luma from Jim Blower's.
22 Feb 2003. Current 32 bit PCs have a memory limit of 4 Gigabytes RAM and in a few years Pcs will be shipping with this limit. 64 bit computers will be the next step and dare I say it final one? Bill Gates (famously) thought 640 Kilobytes RAM would be enough for anyone, but he was wrong. 65,536 - 16 bit address bus e.g. BBC micro 1,048,576 - Old 16 bit (x 16 pages) IBM Pcs 4,294,967,296 - 32 bit current Pcs, 4 Giga-bytes 18,446,744,073,709,552,000 - 64 bit future Pcs, 18 Exa-bytes E P T G M K Kilo Mega Giga Tera Peta Exa Zetta Yotta Xona Weka Vunda Uda Treda Search engine google currently uses 2 Peta-bytes disc space so with 18 Exa-bytes you could fit 9000 Google's into RAM, if you could afford the RAM. Well, if 18 Exa-bytes is still too little then try 128 bit computers with:- 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 U V W X Y Z E P T G M K 340 Uda-bytes RAM memory or 170 Zetta-Googles. Itīs still not that much. A person has about 7 Xona-atoms. so we can only fit in about 50 billion people to RAM. Going up to 256 bits and RAM of 100 Tebilubibytes (10^77). There are this order of atoms in the universe so a 256 bit computer could just fit that in. Errr.... wait a minute, there wouldn't be enough atoms to build the RAM. 256 bit PCU's should be enough for anyone then. Moore's law states that computing power will double every 18 months or so but the 256 limit is one indicator to the contrary. The end of a sequence in computing is approaching. From 8 bit computers, it went up quickly to 16 bit, then 32, now 64 is coming in, They might bother with 128 but there really isn't much point going higher after that. Moore's law definitely doesn't apply to this particular sequence. I suspect it may fail for other types too.

Jim Blower's Extended System of Units

Extended System of Units

More information at Jim Blower's Blog - jimvb.home.mindspring.com

The International system of units is a system of units to help us write down quantities without having to use scientific notation or lots of digits or zeroes. For example, a million Hertz is a megahertz; a billionth of a meter is a nanometer, and a billion meters is a gigameter, which I have almost never heard of; it is 1/4 of the way to the Moon. The international system first invented a system of prefixes that went to 1012 and to 10-18. This proved to be inadequate; for example, we are now talking about thousands of terabytes. So this was extended to 1018, the small units still went only to 10-18.

Even this has proven to be inadequate. So the scientific system went two steps farther in each direction. 1021 is zetta-, and 1024 is yotta-, and for the first time this week, I saw yotta- actually being used. The sun puts out 380 yottawatts of power, says Nearest Star, by Leon Golub and Jay M. Pasachoff, page 12. I can see how these endings were derived. zetta is z + -etta, which is an alteration of septi-, meaning 7, as 21 is 7 groups of three. yotta is y + -otta, an alteration of octo-, meaning 8. The pattern here is that we go backwards from the beginning of the alphabet, starting with z and y, and we follow it up with an alteration of the Greek or Latin for the next number. According to this pattern, the next ending should be xona-, since x comes before y in the alphabet, and 9 is noni- in Latin. Similarly, 1030 should be weka-, since w precedes x and 10 is deka in Greek.

Here is my proposal for extending the system all the way to 1063, a vigintillion, the highest continuous -illion number recognized in dictionaries. Why way out this far? We talk of bigger and smaller things all the time. For example, a jiffy is 1/10 of a rimtosecond, 10-43 second, which some say is the smallest unit of time possible. So here is what I say:

Factor Name  Symbol
101 deka da
102 hecto h
103 kilo k
106 mega M
109 giga G
1012 tera T
1015 peta P
1018 exa E
1021 zetta Z
1024 yotta Y
1027 xona X
1030 weka W
1033 vunda V
1036 uda U
1039 treda TD
1042 sorta S
1045 rinta R
1048 quexa Q
1051 pepta PP
1054 ocha O
1057 nena N
1060 minga MI
1063 luma L
Factor Name  Symbol
10-1 deci d
10-2 centi c
10-3 milli m
10-6 micro µ
10-9 nano n
10-12 pico p
10-15 femto f
10-18 atto a
10-21 zepto z
10-24 yocto y
10-27 xonto x
10-30 wekto w
10-33 vunkto v
10-36 unto u
10-39 trekto td
10-42 sotro s
10-45 rimto r
10-48 quekto q
10-51 pekro pk
10-54 otro o
10-57 nekto nk
10-60 mikto mi
10-63 lunto l


 


Extended System of Units

6bone.com 6bone IPv6 backbone - Internet Protocol Version 6 - IPv6 backbone or 6bone. IPv6 provides 128-bit address space rather than 32-bit with the current IPv4. This is 340 billionbillionbillionbillion (3.4 x 10^38) internet addresses rather than the current 4.3 billion which are in short supply.