Comments on: Terabytes by mail--Interview with Jim Gray

Terabytes by mail--Interview with Jim Gray

mooncrow — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 06:41:03 -0800

Interview with Jim Gray, head of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center. "Clear your schedule, because once you've started reading this interview, you won't be able to put it down until you've finished it. Who would ever, in this time of the greatest interconnectivity in human history, go back to shipping bytes around via snail mail as a preferred means of data transfer? (Really, just what type of throughput does the USPS offer?) Jim Gray would do it, that's who. And we're not just talking about Zip disks, no sir; we're talking about shipping entire hard drives, or even complete computer systems, packed full of disks."

By: mooncrow

mooncrow — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 06:46:14 -0800

I see this was also just posted on Slashdot, with almost the same quotation. Weird. But is is a cool interview.

By: signal

signal — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:02:30 -0800

Good article.

By: y6y6y6

y6y6y6 — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:06:30 -0800

"Just" ??? This article gets the over-hype of the year award. Why would an author start an article by telling you how incredible their article is? It's just a clueless interviewer being amazed by the whole Internet/computer thing.

By: mooncrow

mooncrow — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:10:26 -0800

Umm...dude...Gray is being interviewed by David Patterson--you don't know who that is, do you? "Shooting questions at Gray on such topics as open-source databases and smart disks is David Patterson, who holds the Pardee Chair of Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Patterson headed up the design and implementation of RISC I, which laid the foundations for Sun's SPARC architecture. Along with Randy Katz, Patterson also helped pioneer redundant arrays of independent disks—yes, RAID" Sheesh. Kids these days.

By: carter

carter — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:23:29 -0800

On preview - what mooncrow said. I think the puff at the front was put on by a copy editor somewhere. I liked the bit where he compares the relatively high cost of database administration (i.e. humans) with the relatively low cost of storage, and he says "Our chore is to figure out how to waste storage space to save administration." Built in apps for self-organising combined drives/databases sound interesting. The idea that we could (potentially) swap drives and somehow get those drives to format the huge amounts of data on them in ways useful to us is neat. Although, this might be nothing more than the latest in a long line of predictions that technology can provide us not only with the means to store/access/transfer data but also the means to organise it in ways useful to us.

By: Mars Saxman

Mars Saxman — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:24:30 -0800

I don't know where the rest of the world has been, but programmer types have been making jokes like "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magtape" for decades now. I guess the modern version would be "an SUV full of CDRs"...

By: magullo

magullo — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:42:54 -0800

Bill Gates in 1981: "640k should be enough for anybody'' Jim Gray in 2003: "What do you do with a 200-gig disk drive?"

By: F Mackenzie

F Mackenzie — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:49:00 -0800

Slightly off-topic: I see at the end of the article that relational-database pioneer Ted Codd died in April. I can't believe I missed that. C.J. Date talks about Codd's contributions to the computer industry.

By: nomisxid

nomisxid — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 08:07:18 -0800

At my current employer, we routinely have to send 3-7 Tb of data from one place to another, with not just speed, but insurability, so they bought 3 Sun RAIDs and ship them via fedex back and forth.

By: willnot

willnot — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 09:19:57 -0800

"What do you do with a 200-gig disk drive?" I think he may have misspoke. I think he's asking what do you do with a 20 terabyte disk. That's the only way the 10,000 movies line that comes a bit later makes sense. We'll still find all kinds of ways to fill that space (which he acknowledges), but nobody really knows what that's going to be yet. Me, I want my petabyte drive now damn it.

By: mooncrow

mooncrow — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 09:51:53 -0800

Yes, I was saddened to see that "relational-database pioneer Ted Codd died in April. I can't believe I missed that." I'm not sure how I did either, considering his importance to so many things with which I'm involved. I'm sorry that he is gone.

By: Wood

Wood — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:12:33 -0800

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think fedex will insure the data on the disks. Or is it one of those things where they'll insure for however much money you put on the line and charge your commensurately.

By: badstone

badstone — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:14:54 -0800

nobody really knows what that's going to be yet. Voxels for one. When we have fully realized interactive 3D without any rendering tricks, without constraining what the subject can look at and how closely they can look, the storage need will be ginormous.

By: lbergstr

lbergstr — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:41:35 -0800

There's some mindblowing stuff in that article. It doesn't have anything to do with shipping data by mail. Disks will replace tapes, and disks will have infinite capacity....gradually, all the processors will migrate to the transducers: displays, network interfaces, cameras, disks, and other devices....in that world, all the stuff about interfaces of SCSI and IDE and so on disappears. It's IP.

By: birdherder

birdherder — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 11:20:42 -0800

"What do you do with a 200-gig disk drive?" porn. movies. music.

By: vbfg

vbfg — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 12:07:37 -0800

Exactly what I was thinking, lbergstr. Also the potential from components being more intelligent with their own full operating systems, network stacks and services seems so obvious as stated but it's not something I'd really considered.

By: shadow45

shadow45 — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 12:52:44 -0800

nomisxid: At my current employer, we routinely have to send 3-7 Tb of data from one place to another, with not just speed, but insurability, so they bought 3 Sun RAIDs and ship them via fedex back and forth. wow. that's a scary thought. you never have disk failure?

By: billsaysthis

billsaysthis — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 14:00:55 -0800

Shadow, I believe that fear is why the company uses RAID drives. (Written with a question in my mind whether or not you understand what RAID is...)

By: topherbecker

topherbecker — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 14:16:01 -0800

This was a great interview I thought...One thing that I know will be done with peta- and exabit storage capabilities is begin to further explore the human genome. The idea is that soon enough (within a few years) scientists will be able to sequence an individuals entire genome rapidly for under a thousand dollars. Many people will have their genome sequenced to give their doctor a complete (understatement!) picture of the patient. Researchers will then take genotypic information from many humans to begin correlating genes with diseases (to a much greater degree of accuracy than is possible today).

By: billsaysthis

billsaysthis — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 14:29:14 -0800

topherbecker, agreed that this is a very interesting link (though perhaps slightly more suited to /.) but I don't quite see how petabyte storage help with genetic research when these guys (high-level scientists) already have access to just about any hardware they need. For the analysis you point out, I think the greater need is huge amounts of faster processor time. Maybe faster/smarter disk i/o helps some... The other issue here is privacy, which will probably smack large scale genetic analytical projects right in the face. Are you going to give a copy of your 'hard disk' to some anonymous researcher and not worry where that data ends up?

By: inpHilltr8r

inpHilltr8r — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 14:34:22 -0800

Yes, I was saddened to see that "relational-database pioneer Ted Codd died in April. I can't believe I missed that." I'm not sure how I did either, considering his importance to so many things with which I'm involved. I'm sorry that he is gone. I noticed, I told the rest of our programming department that: "Codd is dead!" ...but no-one cared. I guess he's only really important if you've ever held relational databases close to your heart. ...and it was a 20 terabyte disk, as the disk guys reckon they have a factor of 100 left, before they run out of ideas again, and we're already on the 200 gigabyte disk.

By: gyc

gyc — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 14:47:45 -0800

David Patterson, who holds the Pardee Chair of Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Patterson headed up the design and implementation of RISC I, which laid the foundations for Sun's SPARC architecture. Along with Randy Katz, Patterson also helped pioneer redundant arrays of independent disks—yes, RAID" Sheesh. Kids these days. Kids today would probably better know Patterson as half of the duo of Patterson and Hennessy.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Sat, 12 Jul 2003 17:15:58 -0800

Just starting to read the article.. the bottleneck is throughput between disk and CPU ie. memory -- if storage is as fast as or faster than memory it keeps the CPU race alive. So it's not only amounts of storage, but speed of storage. Just like bandwidth is throughput + latency same with storage. It's like the difference between a 10Mb satellite modem and 10Mb cable modem.