Comment by kazen44
3 months ago
just look at the insane amount of computers that currently exist and need to communicate to do data processing.
I remember 30 years ago most people used one single computer for the family at home, half of the people i knew didn't have proper internet access. (and this is from a western perspective, the rest of the world was even far less digitized).
Now look at how much networked computers are around you. - your phone - one or multiple TV's - laptops/desktops etc - smart home appliances.
and this is just looking at the very small sample size of a normal household, add up to that things like the digitizalisation of factories, the digitalization of the rest of the world. (internet access has grown massively in the past 15 years in the developing world).
We have far more computers then a decade ago, and far more people have them aswell, and it shows very little signs of stopping.
IPv6 for instance, supports an absolutely infanthomable IP address space. (which people often seem to think is overkill), but looking at the past growth, i think having suchs a large address space is a wise choice.
Another thing which people seem to not notice is that a lot of older DC's are being phased out, mainly because these facilities are repurposed telephone exchanges and far less suitable for more power hungry computing power.
>We have far more computers then a decade ago,
Yes that was already taken into account. We rushed pass active usage of Smartphone of 4B in 2020. With additional 1B user who have access to 4G / Smartphone but not using any Data. 1B people who cant afford it or are using feature phone. And around 1B people who are outside the age of using smartphone, child, baby etc. That is a total Around 7B people already. And anything after is a long tail of new generation outpacing older generation. Tablet usage has levelled off. PC market hasn't had new growth outside China and India. COVID managed to fasten a lot these digitalisation. I wrote about how the Growth of AWS in 2023 was roughly equal to doubling of itself in 2016. i.e 2023 AWS was building out the size of AWS 2016. That is insane. And yet we are still building more.
>Another thing which people seem to not notice is that a lot of older DC's are being phased out,
That is something I am not aware. But certainly will keep a look out. This got me thinking if building out a new DC is easier and cheaper than repurposing older DC not designed for high computing power density usage? While I have said we could increase Compute, RAM , Storage density in Rack by 10-20x, we have also increase power usage by 4 - 5x. Not only electricity / power usage but cooling and design also requires additional thoughts.