Computing power generally follows Moore’s Law which in summary states that computing power will nearly double every two years. This means that systems we have today are exponentially more powerful than what we had just 10 years ago. This is enabling many incredible technologies to emerge across a variety of industries. Here are a few new markets that have exploded due to increased capabilities of computers, servers and specialized electronics.
I’m sure you have heard the word datacenter before, but how are they changing? You would assume that the size of these locations would decrease as disk drives are able to hold more and all other surrounding components become smaller, but this hasn’t been the case. Hundreds of new advanced datacenters have been popping up all over utilizing advanced hardware and technologies to create the most efficient form of storing and delivering data, whatever that might be.
This is partly in due to many services moving from older style formats to a web based delivery system such as Blockbuster being replaced by Netflix. You can only imagine the amount of traffic and load that is placed on a datacenter to keep up with the number of shows and movies being watched. Something else that has had a heavy influence on the size and capacity of these locations is the gaming industry which has well exceeded the growth rate of Moore’s Law throughout the last decade.
Games such as Minecraft have enlisted tens of millions of players who spend many hours each week playing the game. This is related to the server industry as most games are now installed on a local computer, but played while connected to a server. One datacenter can easily be packed with thousands of different servers running at the same time hosting everyone’s game. In the game of Minecraft, individual players are given the ability to create their own world through a Minecraft server hosting company. http://apexminecrafthosting.com allows them to have their world available 24 hours a day 7 days a week as the datacenter team works tirelessly to make sure that the services are always available. It is easy to see why these datacenters are becoming very profitable in a competitive environment and being built on a regular basis.
Another driving factor for the rapid development of computing power is almost comparable to the arms race. In today’s age, there is an competition continuing on from what was seen many years ago, but it much more secretive. One of the most important pieces of a military now is intelligence and information. Supercomputing power has allowed for governments to monitor every single bit of communication taking place all over the world while being analyzed by these systems. On the front it is known as the push for the fastest supercomputer in the world, but we all know what lies beneath the surface.
These advanced computers can perform research, development and analysis of advanced problems that would otherwise be impossible to reach conclusions. Currently, China houses the fastest supercomputer named the Tianhe-2. This isn’t all bad news though, as these systems becomes more affordable, they can be applied in more markets such as healthcare. This would enable researches to enlist to the power of a supercomputer to help solve the toughest health related issues in the world.
Looking forward, there is still much potential and opportunity for intelligent systems to be developed to assist in any of these markets. Right now every device needs to be perfectly programmed to perform a specific task, while computing of the future offers a more flexible and intelligent design, which will be able to adapt to the task at hand.