ZFS: Open Source 128-bit File System from Sun Microsystems
Drew Thaler writes about the 128=bit open source (thank you, Sun Microsystems) ZFS file system.
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“We’ve rethought everything and rearchitected it,” says Jeff Bonwick, Sun distinguished engineer and chief architect of ZFS. “We’ve thrown away 20 years of old technology that was based on assumptions no longer true today.”
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ZFS is a 128-bit file system, so it can store 18 billion billion (18.4 × 1018) times more data than current 64-bit systems. The limitations of ZFS are designed to be so large that they will not be encountered in practice for some time.
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If a billion computers each filled a billion individual file systems per second, the time required to reach the limit of the overall system would be almost 1,000 times the estimated age of the universe.
Project leader Bonwick said, “Populating 128-bit file systems would exceed the quantum limits of earth-based storage. You couldn’t fill a 128-bit storage pool without boiling the oceans.”[1] Later he clarified:
Although we’d all like Moore’s Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any physical device. In particular, it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 liter of space can perform at most 1051 operations per second on at most 1031 bits of information [see Seth Lloyd, "Ultimate physical limits to computation." Nature 406, 1047-1054 (2000)]. A fully populated 128-bit storage pool would contain 2128 blocks = 2137 bytes = 2140 bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be (2140 bits) / (1031 bits/kg) = 136 billion kg.
To operate at the 1031 bits/kg limit, however, the entire mass of the computer must be in the form of pure energy. By E=mc², the rest energy of 136 billion kg is 1.2×1028 J. The mass of the oceans is about 1.4×1021 kg. It takes about 4,000 J to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celsius, and thus about 400,000 J to heat 1 kg of water from freezing to boiling. The latent heat of vaporization adds another 2 million J/kg. Thus the energy required to boil the oceans is about 2.4×106 J/kg * 1.4×1021 kg = 3.4×1027 J. Thus, fully populating a 128-bit storage pool would, literally, require more energy than boiling the oceans.[9]