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The human brain is estimated at 2.5 Pb of storage [0]. Assuming a "Moore's Law" like behavior of storage price, so that price halves every 2-3 years and assumin

The human brain is estimated at 2.5 Pb of storage [0]. Assuming a "Moore's Law" like behavior of storage price, so that price halves every 2-3 years and assuming we use storage as a proxy for the space, access speed and computational power, the time it will take to have a $1000 computer that has the storage capacity of the brain will be in the 10-16 year time horizon. This puts the timeline to about 2029-2035. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memor...

nine_k 5y ago
It is not hard to create a RAID array with 2.5 Pb capacity. The trick of the human brain is that the "processing power" is enmeshed into the "memory", so the brain must have a colossal computational bandwidth, even with pretty slow neurons. I suppose that bandwidth is larger than that of most modern GPU / TPU clusters, which also don't feature anything comparable to 2.5Pb or RAM in their disposal. The revolution should be mostly in the architecture, much like the deep learning evolution was enabled by GPUs.
- abetusk 5y ago
  I think you missed the critical point: for $1000. Feasibility is great but economic access is the aspect that I'm focusing on.
Something1234 5y ago
In the past 10 years, I think we had a 8x increase in easily available storage going from 1TB drives being a $100 to a 16TB drive being roughly $250. So I would have to say that your time scale is way too optimistic at best.
- abetusk 5y ago
  I won't check your numbers and take them at face value. Even with your numbers, that's a 6.4x decrease in price per TB (($100/1Tb) / ($250/16TB)), which is around 2.7 halvings over the course of 10 years, which is very close to my "2-3 years per halving" statement. Even if it's slower than a halving in price per 2-3 years, 4-5 years say, this only delays my prediction by a decade or so.
theaeolist 5y ago
We DO have PB-grade storage facilities and they lack full AI. Moving the memory inside a single box instead of having interconnected devices is not going to bring AI just like that.
- abetusk 5y ago
  I think you missed the critical point: for $1000. Feasibility is great but economic access is the aspect that I'm focusing on.

nine_k 5y ago

It is not hard to create a RAID array with 2.5 Pb capacity. The trick of the human brain is that the "processing power" is enmeshed into the "memory", so the brain must have a colossal computational bandwidth, even with pretty slow neurons. I suppose that bandwidth is larger than that of most modern GPU / TPU clusters, which also don't feature anything comparable to 2.5Pb or RAM in their disposal. The revolution should be mostly in the architecture, much like the deep learning evolution was enabled by GPUs.

abetusk 5y ago
I think you missed the critical point: for $1000. Feasibility is great but economic access is the aspect that I'm focusing on.

Something1234 5y ago

In the past 10 years, I think we had a 8x increase in easily available storage going from 1TB drives being a $100 to a 16TB drive being roughly $250. So I would have to say that your time scale is way too optimistic at best.

abetusk 5y ago
I won't check your numbers and take them at face value. Even with your numbers, that's a 6.4x decrease in price per TB (($100/1Tb) / ($250/16TB)), which is around 2.7 halvings over the course of 10 years, which is very close to my "2-3 years per halving" statement. Even if it's slower than a halving in price per 2-3 years, 4-5 years say, this only delays my prediction by a decade or so.

theaeolist 5y ago

We DO have PB-grade storage facilities and they lack full AI. Moving the memory inside a single box instead of having interconnected devices is not going to bring AI just like that.

abetusk 5y ago
I think you missed the critical point: for $1000. Feasibility is great but economic access is the aspect that I'm focusing on.