Exabyte
Encyclopedia
The exabyte is a unit of information
or computer storage
equal to one quintillion byte
s (short scale
). The unit symbol for the exabyte is EB. The unit prefix exa indicates the sixth power of 1000:
The exbibyte
, using a binary prefix
, is the analogous power of 1024 bytes.
In principle, the 64-bit
microprocessors found in many computers can address
16 exbibytes, or just over 18 exabytes, of memory.
, the size of the world's total digital content has been roughly estimated to be 500 Exabytes.
Several filesystems use disk formats that support theoretical volume sizes of several exabytes, including Btrfs
, XFS
, ZFS
, exFAT
, and NTFS
.
in support. The 2003 University of California Berkeley report credits the estimate to the website of Caltech researcher Roy Williams, where the statement can be found as early as May 1999. This statement has been criticized. Mark Liberman
calculated the storage requirements for all human speech at 42 zettabyte
s (42,000 exabytes, and 8,400 times the original estimate), if digitized as 16 kHz 16-bit audio, although he did freely confess that "maybe the authors [of the exabyte estimate] were thinking about text."
Earlier Berkeley studies estimated that by the end of 1999, the sum of human-produced information (including all audio, video recordings and text/books) was about 12 exabytes of data. The 2003 Berkeley report stated that in 2002 alone, "telephone calls worldwide on both landlines and mobile phones contained 17.3 exabytes of new information if stored in digital form" and that "it would take 9.25 exabytes of storage to hold all U.S. [telephone] calls each year." International Data Corporation estimates that approximately 160 exabytes of digital information were created, captured, and replicated worldwide in 2006. A research from University of Southern California
estimates that the amount of data stored in the world by 2007 as 295 exabytes and the amount of information shared on two-way communications technology, such as cell phones in 2007 as 65 exabytes.
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
or computer storage
Computer storage
Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components and recording media that retain digital data. Data storage is one of the core functions and fundamental components of computers....
equal to one quintillion byte
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
s (short scale
Long and short scales
The long and short scales are two of several different large-number naming systems used throughout the world for integer powers of ten. Many countries, including most in continental Europe, use the long scale whereas most English-speaking countries use the short scale...
). The unit symbol for the exabyte is EB. The unit prefix exa indicates the sixth power of 1000:
- 1 EB = = 1018 bytes = 1 billion gigabytes = 1 million terabytes
The exbibyte
Exbibyte
The exbibyte is a standards-based binary multiple of the byte, a unit of digital information storage. The exbibyte unit symbol is EiB....
, using a binary prefix
Binary prefix
In computing, a binary prefix is a specifier or mnemonic that is prepended to the units of digital information, the bit and the byte, to indicate multiplication by a power of 2...
, is the analogous power of 1024 bytes.
In principle, the 64-bit
64-bit
64-bit is a word size that defines certain classes of computer architecture, buses, memory and CPUs, and by extension the software that runs on them. 64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1970s and in RISC-based workstations and servers since the early 1990s...
microprocessors found in many computers can address
Address space
In computing, an address space defines a range of discrete addresses, each of which may correspond to a network host, peripheral device, disk sector, a memory cell or other logical or physical entity.- Overview :...
16 exbibytes, or just over 18 exabytes, of memory.
Usage examples
- The world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986 to 15.8 in 1993, over 54.5 in 2000, and to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007. This is equivalent to less than one 730-MB CD-ROMCD-ROMA CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
per person in 1986 (539 MB per person), roughly 4 CD-ROMCD-ROMA CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
per person of 1993, 12 CD-ROMCD-ROMA CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
per person in the year 2000, and almost 61 CD-ROMCD-ROMA CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
per person in 2007. Piling up the imagined 404 billion CD-ROMCD-ROMA CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
from 2007 would create a stack from the earthEarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
to the moonMoonThe Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
and a quarter of this distance beyond (with 1.2 mm thickness per CD).
- The world’s technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcastBroadcastBroadcast or Broadcasting may refer to:* Broadcasting, the transmission of audio and video signals* Broadcast, an individual television program or radio program* Broadcast , an English electronic music band...
networks was 432 exabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 715 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1993, 1,200 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2000, and 1,900 in 2007.
- The world's effective capacity to exchange information through two-way telecommunicationTelecommunicationTelecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
networks was 0.281 exabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 0.471 in 1993, 2.2 in 2000, and 65 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007.
- In 2004, the global monthly Internet trafficInternet traffic-Historical Internet Traffic Growth:Because of the distributed nature of the Internet, there is no single point of measurement for total Internet traffic...
passed 1 exabyte for the first time. In January 2007, Bret Swanson of the Discovery InstituteDiscovery InstituteThe Discovery Institute is a non-profit public policy think tank based in Seattle, Washington, best known for its advocacy of intelligent design...
coined the term exaflood for a supposedly impending flood of exabytes that would cause the Internet's congestive collapse. Nevertheless, the global Internet traffic has continued its exponential growth, undisturbed, and it is estimated at 21 exabytes per month.
- According to the June 2009 update of the CiscoCiscoCisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...
Visual Networking Index IP traffic forecast, by 2013, annual global IP traffic will reach two-thirds of a zettabyteZettabyteA zettabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one sextillion bytes....
or 667 exabytes. InternetInternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
video will generate over 18 exabytes per month in 2013. Global mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 131 percent between 2008 and 2013, reaching over two exabytes per month by 2013.
, the size of the world's total digital content has been roughly estimated to be 500 Exabytes.
- According to an IDCInternational Data CorporationInternational Data Corporation is a market research and analysis firm specializing in information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology. IDC is a subsidiary of International Data Group...
paper sponsored by EMC CorporationEMC CorporationEMC Corporation , a Financial Times Global 500, Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company, develops, delivers and supports information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure hardware, software, and services. EMC is headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA.Former Intel executive Richard Egan and his...
, 161 exabytes of data were created in 2006, "3 million times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written," with the number expected to hit 988 exabytes in 2010.
- According to CSIRO, in the next decade, astronomers expect to be processing 10 petabytes of data every hour from the Square Kilometre ArraySquare Kilometre ArrayThe Square Kilometre Array is a radio telescope in development which will have a total collecting area of approximately one square kilometre. It will operate over a wide range of frequencies and its size will make it 50 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument...
(SKA) telescope. The array is thus expected to generate approximately one exabyte every four days of operation. According to IBMIBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, the new SKA telescope initiative will generate over an exabyte of data every day. IBM is designing hardware to process this information.
- According to the Digital Britain Report, 494 exabytes of data was transferred across the globe on June 15, 2009.
Several filesystems use disk formats that support theoretical volume sizes of several exabytes, including Btrfs
Btrfs
Btrfs is a GPL-licensed copy-on-write file system for Linux.Development began at Oracle Corporation in 2007....
, XFS
XFS
XFS is a high-performance journaling file system created by Silicon Graphics, Inc. It is the default file system in IRIX releases 5.3 and onwards and later ported to the Linux kernel. XFS is particularly proficient at parallel IO due to its allocation group based design...
, ZFS
ZFS
In computing, ZFS is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. The features of ZFS include data integrity verification against data corruption modes , support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management,...
, exFAT
ExFAT
exFAT is a proprietary, patent-pending file system designed especially for USB flash drives. Developed by Microsoft, it is supported in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 with update KB955704, Windows Embedded CE 6.0, Windows Vista with Service Pack 1, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows...
, and NTFS
NTFS
NTFS is the standard file system of Windows NT, including its later versions Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7....
.
- The ext4Ext4The ext4 or fourth extended filesystem is a journaling file system for Linux, developed as the successor to ext3.It was born as a series of backward compatible extensions to ext3, many of them originally developed by Cluster File Systems for the Lustre file system between 2003 and 2006, meant to...
file system format supports volumes up to 1 exabyte in size, although the userspace tools cannot yet administer such filesystems.
- Oracle CorporationOracle CorporationOracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
claimed the first Exabyte tape library with the SL8500 and the T1000C tape drive in January 2011.
All words ever spoken
A popular expression claims that "all words ever spoken by human beings" could be stored in approximately 5 exabytes of data, often citing a project at the UC Berkeley School of InformationUC Berkeley School of Information
The UC Berkeley School of Information or the iSchool is a graduate school offering both a professional master's degree and a research-oriented Ph.D. degree at the University of California, Berkeley. The school was created in 1994 and was known as the School of Information Management and Systems ...
in support. The 2003 University of California Berkeley report credits the estimate to the website of Caltech researcher Roy Williams, where the statement can be found as early as May 1999. This statement has been criticized. Mark Liberman
Mark Liberman
Mark Liberman is an American linguist. He has a dual appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, as Trustee Professor of Phonetics in the Department of Linguistics, and as a professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences. He is the founder and director of the Linguistic Data...
calculated the storage requirements for all human speech at 42 zettabyte
Zettabyte
A zettabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one sextillion bytes....
s (42,000 exabytes, and 8,400 times the original estimate), if digitized as 16 kHz 16-bit audio, although he did freely confess that "maybe the authors [of the exabyte estimate] were thinking about text."
Earlier Berkeley studies estimated that by the end of 1999, the sum of human-produced information (including all audio, video recordings and text/books) was about 12 exabytes of data. The 2003 Berkeley report stated that in 2002 alone, "telephone calls worldwide on both landlines and mobile phones contained 17.3 exabytes of new information if stored in digital form" and that "it would take 9.25 exabytes of storage to hold all U.S. [telephone] calls each year." International Data Corporation estimates that approximately 160 exabytes of digital information were created, captured, and replicated worldwide in 2006. A research from University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
estimates that the amount of data stored in the world by 2007 as 295 exabytes and the amount of information shared on two-way communications technology, such as cell phones in 2007 as 65 exabytes.