From 5 MB to 1 TB, from a cabinet to a smartphone, i.e. a short memory history

Today, the brightest smartphone has 1 TB of built-in memory, but hard drives needed 51 years to reach this capacity. What was happening at that time? Let's follow the history of media to understand how fantastic times we live.

Today, memory counted in terabytes is commonplace, and pocket devices with 1 TB memory are a reality, although it is still hard to believe. We had to go a long way to reach this level. Let's follow her key points.

1956. A wardrobe that holds 5 MB.

In the mid-1950s, engineers and scientists sought a method for a more efficient method of writing and reading data. The current technology of recording on magnetic tapes ceased to be sufficient for scientific purposes and was increasingly problematic.

1956 was a breakthrough year. It was then that the first hard disk was created. It was the size of a large wardrobe and weighed a ton, while the computer with which it worked ... occupied the entire room. The first disk contained less than 5 MB located on 50 twenty-four-inch plates. It cost a dizzying 10,000 dollars.

1980. The first gigabyte.

The 1 GB barrier was crossed for the first time in 1980. The new memory could de facto hold up to 2.52 GB. No miniaturization was visible at this stage: the disk was still the size of a large fridge, and its weight was 250 kg. The lower weight did not come from the newer technology of the discs themselves, but from a much lighter casing, which ceased to look like an armored wardrobe.

The price was astronomical, because the disk, depending on the configuration, cost from 81 thousand. up to 142 thousand dollars.

The year 1980 was also a breakthrough for the consumer market, because it was then that the first hard drive for personal computers, i.e. the segment that was just beginning to crawl, was created. The disk had a 5.25-inch format, it could hold 5 MB of data and cost $ 1,500.

2007. First terabyte.

In January 2007, the first hard disk was created that broke the 1 TB barrier. The disk cost $ 399 It was a huge milestone for the industry. It was 51 years after the creation of the first 5 MB hard disk. Interestingly, at the same time it was only two years after the creation of the first 512 GB disk.

From wardrobe size to pocket size.

Disc disk technology is still being developed, but the future is solid state drives based on flash memory. They can be much smaller and faster than HDDs, and they are much more resistant because they do not contain mechanical parts. These types of discs do not make any sound at work, unlike disc designs. Without flash memory we would not have smartphones in today's form.

The first SSD was created in 1991 and had a capacity of 20 MB. However, it wasn't built around flash memory. The first modern SSD based on flash memory was created in 1995.

Since then, reality has changed. We need less and less memory in computers, and more and more in smartphones.

For years, basic laptops have SSD memory with a capacity of 128 GB. This value does not increase because there are fewer and fewer reasons for this. Music and movies? We stream them from sites like Spotify and Netflix, so multimedia do not take up space in the device's memory. Documents? We store them in the cloud more and more often.

Paradoxically, today the smartphone should have as much memory as possible, because it is not only our terminal for internet services, but also a camera and a camera. In the era of 4K movies and high-resolution photos, large memory is needed like never before. We generate new content mainly using a smartphone, so this device should be as large as possible.

The first Samsung Galaxy S from 2010 had 512 MB RAM and 8 or 16 GB of memory. The second Galaxy S2 had 16 or 32 GB of memory and 1 GB of RAM. Up to the Galaxy S5 model, the memory changed only slightly, reaching 64 GB in top editions.

Galaxy S6 ushered in the era of 128 GB, although the standard at that time was 32 GB or a maximum of 64 GB of memory. Galaxy S9 has expanded the maximum available memory to dizzying 256 GB.

Year 2019. The first smartphone with 1 TB memory.

Samsung Galaxy S10 + Performance Edition is the first smartphone with built-in 1 TB memory. For this device has a dizzying 12 GB of RAM. I have been using this smartphone for two months at work and try to fill its memory. Although there were many attempts, I haven't reached even 300 GB. During this time, I have not removed a single thing from the smartphone - photo, film, application - because there is simply no such need.

For comparison, my laptop has exactly four times smaller memory, equal to 256 GB. Only two years ago I did not think that the smartphone will be able to have four times more memory than a computer, but it is true.

Equally cosmic is 12 GB RAM, especially in the context of the quote that "640 KB should be enough for everyone." The quote (contrary to the misconception, these are not the words of Bill Gates, but the editor-in-chief of InfoWorld), was current in 1981. Time has shown that there was little truth in it.

Today, 12 GB of RAM should be enough for everyone , but it is difficult to predict what will happen in 30 years. We can only be sure that we will change from giga- and tera units to petabytes, exabytes, zettabytes, and maybe even jottabytes. And if a similar article is created in 2049, its author will definitely mention that the first smartphone with a breakthrough capacity of 1 TB was just Samsung Galaxy S10 + Performance Edition.

* The material was created in cooperation with the Samsung brand.

From 5 MB to 1 TB, from a cabinet to a smartphone, i.e. a short memory history