Chris PirilloThis is what 5 megabytes looked like in 1956. #tech #history #retro #retrocomputing #technology #histodons #photo
Chris Trottier@ChrisPirillo I wonder what 5MB looks like today.
djohngo@atomicpoet @ChrisPirillo Way smaller than a grain of rice if Bloomberg is to be believed.
octt 
@djohngo @atomicpoet
Consider that the most dense (commercial-grade) storage media we have today is the 1 TB microSD card; that's 10^12 bytes.
According to Wikipedia, a microSD is 15 mm × 11 mm × 1 mm large, which is a volume of 165 mm³.. or 165 * 10^9 um³ (cubic micrometers).
Actually that physical space doesn't only hold bits, as the actual flash chip is a bit smaller (you can get an idea of its size from this picture: https://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/microsd_lineup.jpg), but, for the sake of argument, let's calculate storage density based on the size of the entire card.
Well, let's divide the volume by the bytes.. and we get that 1 byte is 0.165 um³.
Finally, knowing that 5 MB is 5 * 10^6 bytes, we can calculate that 5 MB is 825000 um³, or 0.000825 mm³.
If my calculations are actually correct then I'd say that "smaller than a grain of rice" isn't doing it justice AT ALL! 😅
@ChrisPirillo
Consider that the most dense (commercial-grade) storage media we have today is the 1 TB microSD card; that's 10^12 bytes.
According to Wikipedia, a microSD is 15 mm × 11 mm × 1 mm large, which is a volume of 165 mm³.. or 165 * 10^9 um³ (cubic micrometers).
Actually that physical space doesn't only hold bits, as the actual flash chip is a bit smaller (you can get an idea of its size from this picture: https://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/microsd_lineup.jpg), but, for the sake of argument, let's calculate storage density based on the size of the entire card.
Well, let's divide the volume by the bytes.. and we get that 1 byte is 0.165 um³.
Finally, knowing that 5 MB is 5 * 10^6 bytes, we can calculate that 5 MB is 825000 um³, or 0.000825 mm³.
If my calculations are actually correct then I'd say that "smaller than a grain of rice" isn't doing it justice AT ALL! 😅
@ChrisPirillo