At What Point Will...

At what point in time is the internet connection speed going to be faster than the hard drive transfer speed?
i mean, currently, the fastest hard drives commercially available (scsi 15000 rpm) can transfer at around 160MB/sec.
now, military connections and business connections are much faster than this (gigabits per second).
what kind of hard drives do these military/governmental computers/mainframes use?
and at what time in the future will residentially available adsl/cable be faster than hard drives can handle? if that happens at all?

Those military/government PCs you speak of probbably have either a ) a ton of RAM(which a lot of them do) or B ) a SCSI array(double your speed, *drool*) or c) both. Or, the connection could simply be split off to several PCs which can handle the bandwidth(I think that is the most likely solution).

L J

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

RAM drives are the answer. A solidstate "Hard drive", no moving parts.
The technology is there, but the money to buy one is not yet feasable.

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Originally posted by Spindulik@13 May 2003 - 11:57
RAM drives are the answer. A solidstate "Hard drive", no moving parts.
The technology is there, but the money to buy one is not yet feasable.

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I was only talking to a mate yesterday about solid state hard drives, I think it will happen and probably soon!!!
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/Pumpencum/...re_us_n00b.gif

A RAM drive will look and work like a regular hard drive. It will even have the standard pins for a ribbon cable. Also, it may have a Hard disk emulator, so older motherboards will communicate to it, emulating sectors. Could even be used in DOS computers.

Memory sticks are already here, but it is possibe to have a standard "memory disk". A whole new fast format that could possibly replace CDs or DVDs. Imagine a postage stamp sized chip, that can hold 4 GBs. Sounds unrealistic? So did a 1GB hard drive, at one time.

Fiber optic motherboards may be the next innovation. It has been done, at nearly a milion dollars, just to see if it could be done. What is faster than the speed of light?

In the past 10 years, we have only scratched the surface of computer technology. What will the next 20 years bring?

i've seen a tweak in tweak xp pro about ram drives, but couldn't get it to work.
anyway, thanks for the replies, i wasn't really sure when i asked this question what the answers would be, thought it might get laughed away, but there are some good answers.

p.s. it makes you think about what kind of pc bill gates has, must be pretty good :P

i think its possible with radio connections (not sure if they're practical or even available to most), but i read they can transfer up to 1gig a second :D might have read it wrong, but it'll be damn nice if it was true.

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

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Originally posted by thisiswhoweare@13 May 2003 - 15:39
i think its possible with radio connections (not sure if they're practical or even available to most), but i read they can transfer up to 1gig a second :D might have read it wrong, but it'll be damn nice if it was true.

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There actually is radio connection! I tried it one time.

I bought a TVMAX TV Tuner Video capture card. It came with software that allowed your tuner card to recieve a digital signal, via TV antennae, or wire inserted into your coax connector.

You had to live near a city that broadcasted the signal. It took 6 hours to download 1 mb. So it sucks.

ALSO, they are experimenting with using your existing power lines into your home, as a way to facilitate broadband internet. The advantage is that you don't need any phone wires or cable, and the wire is already there. It has worked with limited success! There still is a problem with mixing digital information with an AC current. Too many errors. But there is a possibility that could be corrected.

Cable may be the answer, due to fiber optics. In my city, all cable television is fiber optic, until it reaches a hub. One hub will supply 250 customers, that is where the bottle neck is. The fiber optic is converted to copper coax cable.

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Originally posted by balamm@13 May 2003 - 19:34
The processor uses refracted light passed through a swiss cheese type matrix to process data.

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Yeah, and light can pass through itself in multiple angles at different frequencies (colors?). Thus allowing more data transfer occupying the same space.

one of my university lecturers said he did a bit of work on quantum computers, utilising schroedinger's cat theorum, however, the computer had to be kept in an atmosphere of liquid helium (at 4 degrees centigrade above absolute zero).

p.s. in reply to your earlier (rhetorical) question about what is faster than the speed of light, there is some proof that subatomic particles can be in two places at the same time (thus they can travel faster than light). don't flame this please

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Originally posted by amphoteric88@13 May 2003 - 19:51
...subatomic particles can be in two places at the same time (thus they can travel faster than light). don't flame this please

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No flame dude.


Didn't some scientists do that already? For real. Use light to transmit an image in they way you described?

Is light a WAVE or PARTICAL or BOTH? It is a wave when traveling, but a partical when reflected. Don't flame me on this.

you've obviously heard of wave-particle duality then.
i hated doing the equations based on that. :D

schroedinger's cat theorum suggested that if there were a number of possible energy levels (boxes for the basis of discussion) and there was a particle (cat) in one of the boxes, you could accurately predict which box(or boxes) the cat would be in. this is the basis of quantum computing.

particles can be in two places at once. kind of hard to believe, but it's true

however, no object of sensible size has ever been propelled to the speed of light.
a theory called relativistic mass (or energy) comes in to play with general objects. this theory suggests (and has been comfirmed through experiment) that as an object increases it's speed (or has it done for it) its mass increases also. which means that as you go faster, you get heavier and the force you need to accelerate becomes greater. therefore at 99.99% of the speed of light, your weight would be almost infinite, so the force required to accelerate would be too large and couldn't be provided by normal energy sources

:blink: am i the only one confused?

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Originally posted by thisiswhoweare@13 May 2003 - 21:34
:blink: am i the only one confused?

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its not often a topic goes off topic into theoretical physics!

:lol:

if interested, look in journals for it, it is amazingly interesting

lol, sorry for the science.
maybe we need a science world :P (just kidding)
i'm not very good at explaining things, i apologise :(

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

here is a "little" :P bit of info on the 'cat'.
makes interesting readin, but it'll take a while to get through

i dont think ur alone, i do kinda understand, just cant be bothered understanding it.

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Originally posted by amphoteric88@13 May 2003 - 23:30
here is a "little" :P bit of info on the 'cat'.
makes interesting readin, but it'll take a while to get through

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there no pictures, i think ill pass on that

maybe later :blink: :ph34r: :lol: