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originally posted by: DigitalJedi805
In the early 90s, nobody ever thought anyone would fill up a hundred Megabytes. It's not likely that anyone will ever fill that much data with books or notes; but as multimedia grows, so do the space requirements. The company I work for ( contrary to my advisement ) still encodes video at 640x480, and five hours will generate a gigabyte of data. If we were to double that ( which we very well should, as well as moving to widescreen... ), math would dictate that we would end up with two gigs of data for the same information. Considering that resolutions are growing Far beyond what I'm talking about here, when you start dealing with things like... For instance... The 24 hours of Le Mans; if it were to be recorded at 20000 frames at 2560 resolution ( like it should damnit! ), I'd bet you're looking at terrabytes of data. That's just one example.
originally posted by: JJRichey
a reply to: Grimpachi
*Disclaimer* I make no claims to be an expert in this field, but as someone who took a few semesters of computer science, this is my viewpoint on this. I could be totally wrong in my understanding, wouldn't be the first time!
Thats the beauty of this technology. It uses such little power that your liquid cooling setup wouldn't be needed. After all, the majority of your computer systems heat is generated from all those electrical components heating up under stress. Using photonics should generate next to zero heat, as opposed to using copper traces and electricity like is used now. This isn't talking about just a new computer technology, its talking about completely changing the way computers work.
originally posted by: surfinguru
Think Star Trek tri-corders. Someone else mentioned teleportation. DNA sequencing, a myriad of new possibilities. We want to explore space at near or light speed? Going to have to be able to crunch a lot of data to ensure you arrive at your destination safely. Global weather patterns / changes, earthquake predictions. You name it. Suddenly, those things aren't so far fetched.
It does seem pretty surreal to be sure, but it has to start somewhere doesn't it?