The first computer I used was a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-9. It had 48K (that's 48KB, not 48MB or 48GB) of wound ferrite core memory that took up half a very large room. The we booted it with paper tape -- a strip of tape with holes punched in it that got read by a paper tape reader. First we had to set some register switches by hand. No time share. We signed up for use two hours at a time. There was someone in the lab 24/7 using the beast. My first desktop, an Apple II+, had the same amount of memory but it fit on a table top. That was 13 years later. Without a monitor it cost $2200. Still 48K of RAM. In the nineties I was on my third for fourth or fifth Apple (by this time a Mac) but I didn't have a hard drive. Mrs. R. had a young kid working for her at the health department who also did moonlighting at a university computer store. As a Christmas present, she had him get her a special deal, 50% off: a 40 MB hard drive. Cost only $1000. Of course now I am sitting in front of a combined monitor/everything else (the iMac form factor) that has 2 GB of RAM and 250 GB internal hard drive and 500 GB external drive, all for far less than my Apple II plus from 1981. What next? Answer: apparently quantum dot memory:
Memory made from tiny islands of semiconductor - known as quantum dots - could fill a gap left by today's computer memory, allowing storage that is fast as well as long lasting. Researchers have shown they can write information into quantum dot memory in just nanoseconds.Solid-state memory chips - as opposed to hard drives with moving parts - come in two forms. Computers use quick dynamic access memory, or DRAM, for short-term memory. But data does not persist for long and must be refreshed over 100 times per second to maintain its memory.
Flash memory like that used in memory cards and smaller iPods is, despite its name, the elephant of solid memory. It can store data for years without refreshing, but writes information about 1000 times slower than DRAM.
New research shows that memory based quantum dots can provide the best of both: long term storage with write speeds nearly as fast as DRAM. A tightly packed array of the tiny islands - each around 15 nanometers across - could store one terabyte (1000 gigabytes) of data per square inch, the researchers say. (New Scientist)
A terabyte of super fast flash memory smaller than a thumb drive? A terabyte? If I did the back-of-the-envelope calculation right that's about 20 million times as much RAM as took half a room on the PDP-9. And much, much, much faster. And theoretically capable of much faster still, with speeds in the picosecond range (several orders of magnitude faster than now). Instant booting on super light laptops with batteries that last for days?
Of course these memory chips are just prototypes right now. Practical use is still in the future. Which means what? Next month?
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And what would this memory cost? It would already be possible to manufacture static ram chips that are faster than dram and when the computer is switched off, a small battery could retain the state of the memory for years. (In fact, PCs used to have battery backed system configuration memories.) Only sram is a bit more expensive than dram and dram is already too expensive to have tens or hundreds of gigabytes in a PC.
Posted by: Flaky | March 8, 2008 12:49 PM
I still have my Apple IIe -- works well -- but my 2G laptop is the one I REALLY use.
Posted by: BW | March 8, 2008 12:51 PM
Truely amazing...and I typed my Master's Thesis on a typewriter. It is also of note how dependent we all are on these things to function. I now carry a 2 gig flash drive in my pocket at all times along with my keys, etc. I have also noticed in "the medium is the message" strain of thought that that the info tech shapes the way we think as well as the way we communicate and present our work. How often do any of us do presentations anymore without powerpoints? If only we could live long enough to really understand and take advantage of all this....
Posted by: Carl | March 9, 2008 12:21 AM
Dang Revere, Geezer's Unite!
Posted by: Lea | March 9, 2008 12:56 AM
Sinclair ZX81 here (known as Timex-1000 in USA) with 1 KB of RAM ! I still have it.
I later bought the 16K-expansion.
Also still many old programs on tape-audio-discs, which presumably are no longer readable.
Also a big staple of hole-cards with my first chess-program in Fortran
on the university computer.
Memory is plentiful and cheap enough these days. No need to improve.
What is needed is memory which lasts longer. For centuries.
Posted by: anon | March 9, 2008 5:56 AM
Then there is liquid intelligence and its just around the corner now. You will be feeding your computer and keeping him or her warm. I wonder what point they will be called sentients because they can and will be smarter and have more capabilities than us?
It would give us a new world order. Rise of the Machines?
Posted by: M. Randolph Kruger | March 9, 2008 11:20 AM
"It would give us a new world order. Rise of the Machines?"
Might not be as strange as it sounds MRK. Ran across a new site today:
This site is dedicated to research and unveil the perils, imminence and probabilities of a hostile takeover of the world through artificial intelligence.
I'm Robin Baumgarten, and I'm interested in Artificial Intelligence, Games, Astronomy, and Science in general. I'm a PhD student at Imperial College London, UK, where I research AI and Emotions in Video Games.
http://aipanic.com/
If the above link doesn't work I got the information from:
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/sites/sfw18415.html
March 05, 2008
AI Panic
http://aipanic.com/
By A.M. Dellamonica
Humanity loves its gadgets�be they iPods, cell phones or GPS trackers�but it is an affection tempered with unease, a concern that our own creations may one day supplant us. This anxiety has increased as computers have become better, smarter and faster�and nowhere has this emotional friction been more apparent than in the SF field.
...
Posted by: Lea | March 10, 2008 10:19 PM