Bandwidth Boom

Technology and Public Policy in the exaflood Era

NARUC . Seattle . 22 July 2009

ENTROPY ECONOMICS
GLOBAL INNOVATION + TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH

Bret Swanson
entropyeconomics.com | bretswanson.com
 Bandwidth Boom
Technology and Public Policy in the exaflood Era

––

From Bandwidth Boom to Exaflood

The new Internet paradigm

Understanding the pace of technology

Implications for public policy

Internet’s Three Phases
• Phase One – Arpanet in 1969

• Phase Two – Net comes to the masses in

1995 via email and World Wide Web

• Phase Three – Now! Broadband means “the

network is the computer” . . . Video ushers
in the exaflood
Prefixes
kilo = 103

mega = 10 6

giga = 10 9

tera = 10 12

peta = 10 15

exa = 10 18

zetta = 10 21
The
Paralleladigm
Massive parallelism of:
optical fiber with WDM

> new single-fiber record of 32 terabits/second on 320 λ over 580 km

Overwhelmed the serial nature of the existing CPU computer paradigm

> Von Neumann bottleneck limits memory bandwidth

> Too slow for optical packet networks, 3D graphics and HD video

> Too darn hot . . . P = C × V2 × F

NARUC Summer Meetings ... Seattle, Washington – July 22, 2009 ... Bret Swanson – Entropy Economics
The
Paralleladigm
Massive parallelism of:

> optical fiber with WDM

Spawns, complements, accommodates, and requires massive parallelism of:

> GPUs with 800 parallel “stream processors” in 10 cores

> NPUs with 100s of parallel “task optimized processors” (TOPs)

> EPUs with millions of parallel arrayed processors (aka Googleplexes)

> 4G wireless with hundreds of parallel sub-frequency bands (aka OFDM)

NARUC Summer Meetings ... Seattle, Washington – July 22, 2009 ... Bret Swanson – Entropy Economics
 Bandwidth Boom
U.S. Consumer Bandwidth
400000

Total U.S. Consumer Bandwidth

350000
800000

700000 ← 717 terabits per second

300000
600000
gigabits per second

500000
gigabits per second

250000 400000

300000
residential
200000 200000 +
wireless
100000 residential
150000 0
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

wireless
100000

50000

0
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20
 Bandwidth Boom
U.S. Consumer Bandwidth Per Capita
2500

Between 2000 and 2008: 2.35 megabits per second →

2000
•Total residential bandwidth grew 54x.
•Total wireless bandwidth grew 542x.
•Total consumer bandwidth grew 91x.
kilobits per second

1500 •Residential bandwidth per capita grew 50x.

•Wireless bandwidth per capita grew 499x.
•Total consumer bandwidth per capita grew 84x,
for a compound annual growth rate of 74%. residential
1000
residential
+
wireless
wireless
500

0
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20
 What is an exabyte?
• The Library of Congress holds about 20
million big books
• Each book is about 1 megabyte
• The Library of Congress is thus 20
terabytes
• One exabyte is 50,000 Libraries of
Congress
 exaflood
2007 projection for 2015

Analyzing bandwidth and digital application trends, we

projected a 56% compound annual growth rate through
2015 . . .
. . .when U.S. IP traffic could reach:

Movie downloads and P2P………………..….100 exabytes

Video calling and virtual windows…………...400 exabytes
“Cloud computing” and remote backup……....50 exabytes
Net video, gaming, and virtual worlds……......200 exabytes
Non-Internet “IPTV”……………………….100+ exabytes
Business IP traffic…………………………….100 exabytes
Other (phone, Web, e-mail, photos, music)…....50 exabytes
Total…………………………1,000 exabytes = 1 zettabyte
 Video conferencing
–MSN Messenger Video Calling by mid-2007
generated 4 petabytes per month = to the
entire Net in 1997
–Cisco’s new Telepresence requires 15 Mbps
symmetrical bandwidth
–A one-hour conference call = 13.5
gigabytes
–Just 75 of these calls would equal the
entire Internet of 1990
–30 exabytes of telephone traffic each year
–move to video-phones would mean 400
exabytes – at least – in the U.S., or 10x the
size of the existing world Internet
 U.S. Internet Traffic TB/month

1,500,000

1,250,000

1,000,000

750,000

500,000

250,000
199019911992
1993 1994
1995 1996
1997 1998
1999 2000
2001 2002 0
2003 2004
2005 2006
2007 2008
NARUC Summer Meetings
Seattle, Washington – July 22, 2009
Bret Swanson – Entropy Economics
entropyeconomics.com – bretswanson.com
Source: MINTS, Entropy Economics
10,000,000

U.S. Internet Traffic

1,000,000
(log scale)
100,000

10,000

1,000
TB/month
100

10

1
90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

NARUC Summer Meetings

Seattle, Washington – July 22, 2009
Bret Swanson – Entropy Economics
entropyeconomics.com – bretswanson.com Source: MINTS, Entropy Economics
 exaflood
update

YouTube
> receives uploads of 13+ hours of video every minute
> receives 18,720+ hours of video each day
> streams ~150+ petabytes per month
> streams ~3.5 terabytes every minute . . . every 13 min. = 1992
> HD YouTube would mean more than 18 exabytes per year,
equal to total U.S. Internet traffic of 2008
> Netflix would ship about 7 exabytes of HD video each year

Mobile revolution
> 3 billion mobile phones / 1+ billion new devices per year
> 1.9 billion camera phones / Nokia largest “camera” company
> 1 billion iPhone App downloads in six months . . . 50,000 Apps
> “omnichronnectivity” yields constant content creation and
consumption / new iPhone video recorder
> Cisco projects a 66-fold increase in mobile data by 2013
(131% CAGR)
 exacloud
"When the network becomes as fast as the
processor, the computer hollows out and spreads
across the network."
– Eric Schmidt, circa 1993

“The Network is the Computer.”

– Sun Microsystems

NARUC Summer Meetings ... Seattle, Washington – July 22, 2009 ... Bret Swanson – Entropy Economics
 exacloud
OTOY and building Fusion Render Cloud
Petaflops supercomputer with 1,000 GPUs

Renders: up to 8,000 x 8,000 compressed images

@ up to 120 frames/second into any Web browser

Streams: any interactive video experience

. . . at any resolution . . . to any device
NARUC Summer Meetings ... Seattle, Washington – July 22, 2009 ... Bret Swanson – Entropy Economics
 exacloud
AMD/Otoy/LightStage IBM Roadrunner
Fusion Render Cloud Los Alamos National Lab
Burbank, California Los Alamos, New Mexico

1,000 GPUs 1/20 19,500 CPUs

5 racks 1/100 6,000 square feet
150 kW 1/15 2.35 MW
~ $4 million 1/33 $133 million

1+ petaflops = 1.026 petaflops

NARUC Summer Meetings ... Seattle, Washington – July 22, 2009 ... Bret Swanson – Entropy Economics
 exacloud
OTOY / Fusion Render Cloud
Video games > preview before purchase
> rolling release, constant updates
> no DVDs, no piracy
> play on any device, from home theater to mobile phone

Virtual worlds > fully interactive 3D immersive experience, evolves over time

Cinema 2.0 > interactive entertainment

> video game or motion picture? Or both?
NARUC Summer Meetings ... Seattle, Washington – July 22, 2009 ... Bret Swanson – Entropy Economics
 40 hours vs. Right Now
photorealistic 3D ... rendered in real-time
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,655742/Ruby-20-Screenshots-and-video-of-the-new-Radeon-tech-demo/News/
LightStage
Ultra high-resolution capture and rendering
of 3D photo-realistic real-time images
for movies, TV, and the Web
Forget virtual reality.
Just reality.

Emily
1989

• the “most powerful

computer ever!”

• 20 MHz

• 2 MB RAM

• for “only” $8499.00

($15,000 in ’09 USD)

• “monitor and mouse not

included”
 U.S. Internet traffic
1992 = 48 terabytes
2008 = 20 exabytes
2018 ~ 3 zettabytes
2024 ~ pervasive real-time photorealistic 3D
holographic virtual worlds

World Internet traffic

1992 = 48 terabytes
2008 = 60 exabytes
2018 ~ 12 zettabytes
2024 ~ pervasive real-time photorealistic 3D
holographic virtual worlds
 Digital Storage
1992 . . . 1 terabyte ~ $5,000,000
2008 . . . 1 terabyte = $ 109.99
2018 . . . 1 terabyte ~ $ 0.010999
. . . 1 petabyte ~ $ 109.99
2024 . . . all history’s TV and radio on your “laptop”

Flash memory
1992 . . . 8 gigabyte ~ $1,000,000 (iPhone ~ $5 million)
2008 . . . 8 gigabyte = $ 40.00 (now $16.00)
2018 . . . iPhone will store 85 years’ worth of video
2009 The Hard Drive Dilemma
• 1992 – 1 TB was around US$5,000,000

• July 2008 – 1 TB was an astoundingly cheap US$177.99

• January 2009 – 1 TB drive was an amazing US$109.99

 Biology
1992 . . . DNA base pair = $10.00

2008 . . . DNA base pair = $ 0.001

2018 . . . DNA base pair ~ $ 0.000001

2024 . . . One genome for $100

(yours if you like)
+ a full-body MRI scan for free
 China
GDP
1992 . . . GDP = $328 billion . . . like Greece or
Denmark today
2008 . . . GDP ~ $ 4 trillion . . . will overtake Japan next
year for world’s #2
2018 . . . GDP ~ $10 trillion
2024 . . . GDP ~ $16 trillion . . . larger than U.S. today

communications
1992 . . . hardly any Chinese had ever made a phone call
2008 . . . China has twice as many mobile phone
subscribers as the U.S. has people

trade
1992 . . . U.S.-China trade = $ 33 billion
2008 . . . U.S.-China trade = $400 billion
 Web

• In 2015, the U.S., Europe, and Asia could

each transmit the equivalent of 2 Libraries
of Congress every second for the entire
year.
 Mobile Health
• Phone is most personal device
• BAN – Body Area Network
• Remote diagnostics, monitoring, presence,
reminders, family updates
• ECG, apnea, coumadin
• Replace many large devices with small
sensors, phone, and cloud – “diagnostics as
a service”
 U.S. Info-tech Investment
500

2008 info-tech investment = $455 billion ~ 22% of capital investment

450
~ 43% of non-structure capital investment

400

350

300
billions of U.S. $

250

200

150

100

50

0
90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
Software Computers + Peripherals
Communications Equipment Communications Structures

NARUC Summer Meetings ... Seattle, Washington – July 22, 2009 ... Bret Swanson – Entropy Economics
 Thank you.

Bandwidth Boom
NARUC . Seattle . 22 July 2009

ENTROPY ECONOMICS
GLOBAL INNOVATION + TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH

Bret Swanson
entropyeconomics.com | bretswanson.com