Petabyte

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Quantities of bytes
SI prefixes Binary prefixes
Name
(Symbol)
Standard
SI
Alternate
Use
Name
(Symbol)
Value
kilobyte (kB) 103 = 10001 210 kibibyte (KiB) 210
megabyte (MB) 106 = 10002 220 mebibyte (MiB) 220
gigabyte (GB) 109 = 10003 230 gibibyte (GiB) 230
terabyte (TB) 1012 = 10004 240 tebibyte (TiB) 240
petabyte (PB) 1015 = 10005 250 pebibyte (PiB) 250
exabyte (EB) 1018 = 10006 260 exbibyte (EiB) 260
zettabyte (ZB) 1021 = 10007 270 zebibyte (ZiB) 270
yottabyte (YB) 1024 = 10008 280 yobibyte (YiB) 280

A petabyte (derived from the SI prefix peta- ) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one quadrillion bytes. It is commonly abbreviated PB. Because of a traditional inconsistency, "petabytes" are often intended to mean pebibytes in common speech. This usage is not recommended as it creates confusion (see below) and has been facing increasing opposition by many technical standards and legal entities in the past few years.[citation needed]

Because of irregularities in using the binary prefix in the definition and usage of the kilobyte, the exact number in common practice could be either one of the following:

  • 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes — 10005, or 1015.
  • 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes — 10245, or 250. This capacity may be expressed unambiguously as a pebibyte.

Contents

[edit] Petabytes in use

  • 15 petabytes of data will be generated each year in particle physics experiments using CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, due to be launched in 2007. [1]
  • The first commercially-available Petabyte Storage Array was launched by the EMC Corporation in January 2006, with an approximate cost of USD 4 million.[4]
  • In March of 2005, Teradata announced the world's first single server with roughly 500 gigabytes of storage capable of scaling to a multiserver system that can scale up to 4.2 petabytes in size for commercial decision support.[5]
  • NOB Cross media facilities in the Netherlands employs a 1.5-petabyte storage network for the storage of all old and new public television and radio content in digital format. Within the next year, most Dutch public television content will be pulled directly out of this database during broadcast.
  • Google in 2003 had between 2 and 5 petabytes of hard-disk storage. A more recent calculation,[6] dated June 27, 2006, suggests that the Google cluster may now have 4 petabytes of RAM, on the same order of magnitude as the quantity of hard disk space that was estimated only three years earlier.[7]
  • As of November 2006, eBay had 2 petabytes [8] of data.
  • Managed Storage Services offering in IBM Global Services manages more than two petabytes for IBM customers around the world.[10]
  • CERN has, with its newly installed LHC, a datastream with 8 petabyte/year during the collision of small particles.
  • GridKa (The European Tier1 in Karlsruhe/Germany) plans to extend its disk capacity to 4.2 petabytes for the LHC datastream.
  • Indiana University announced on April 5, 2006 that it is acquiring the nation's fastest university-owned supercomputer and largest disk-based research storage facility. This new supercomputer will be connected to more than 1 petabyte of high-speed disk storage. This includes DataDirect Networks high-performance storage and will be by far the largest of its type of university-owned storage in the United States.[11]
  • Some modern commercial tape libraries, robotically accessed collections of tapes primarily used by large organizations for archiving, store several petabytes of data.[12]
  • Drexel University recently announced a new form of data storage so dense that a cubic centimeter contains 12.8 million gigabytes—12.8 petabytes—of information.[13]
  • Hard drives on consumer PCs may start holding at least 1 petabyte of hard drive space by 2020.
  • As of March 30, 2007, Dattebayo Fansubs has received approximately 8.55 Petabytes of total traffic on their bittorrent network from the download of their collective fansubs[14]. However, this approximate is inaccurate, as they do not manage any of their fansubs in the earlier point of their career, meaning that the amount is actually much larger.

[edit] In fiction

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Advert by Hewlett-Packard in Computer Weekly, 16 January 2007
  2. ^ Electronics Weekly, December 11, 2002
  3. ^ Internet Archive FAQ
  4. ^ EMC rolls out $4 million petabyte array
  5. ^ Teradata Achieves Strong Growth, Outpacing the Global Market for Relational Database Management Systems - 6/21/2005
  6. ^ Four petabytes in memory (dated June 27, 2006)
  7. ^ Google's storage strategy
  8. ^ eBay Internals
  9. ^ DataDirect Will Provide 1 Petabyte of Networked Storage for Europe's Fastest Supercomputer at CEA, Awarded by Bull
  10. ^ Managed Storage Servicesat IBM website
  11. ^ IU to acquire nation’s fastest university-owned supercomputer, largest disk-based storage facility
  12. ^ ADIC Scalar 10K Tape Library Adds Support For IBM Enterprise Tape Drive Technology.
  13. ^ Drexel Professor: For a Bigger Computer Hard-drive, Just Add Water
  14. ^ Dattebayo Fansub's Tracker

[edit] External links