Laws of Cyberspace
Jim Gray
Microsoft Research
with help from Gordon Bell, Nathan Myrvold
and laws by Bell, Moore, Gates, Joy, Gilder, Grove,
Grosch, Metcalf, Mryvold,
Talk presented 10/9/98 at International University, Bruchsal Germany
http://research.Microsoft.com/~Gray/talks/Laws_of_Cyberspace.ppt
1
Computer Industry Laws (rules of thumb)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Metcalf’s law
Moore’s First Law
Bell’s Computer Classes (7 price tiers)
Bell’s Platform Evolution
Bell’s Platform Economics
Bill’s Law
Software Economics
Nathan’s 4 Laws of Software
Gilder’s Law of the Telcosom.
Grove’s law (1 and 2)
Moore’s second law
Is Info-Demand Infinite?
The Death of Grosch’s Law
2
1. We get more
3
2. New overtakes old
4
3. Things get cheaper
5
4. Newer & cheaper wins?
Old
Old
New
New
6
Metcalf’s Law
Network Utility = Users2
• How many connections can it make?
• 1 user: no utility
• 1K users: a few contacts
• 1M users: many on net
• 1B users: everyone on net
• That is why the Internet is so “hot”
• Exponential benefit
7
Moore’s First Law
•XXX doubles every 18 months 60% increase per year
1GB
–Micro Processor speeds
128MB
–chip density
1 chip memory size
8MB
( 2 MB to 32 MB)
–Magnetic disk density
1MB
–Communications bandwidth 128KB
WAN bandwidth approaching LANs
8KB
1970
1980
1990
2000
•Exponential Growth:
bits: 1K 4K 16K 64K256K 1M 4M 16M64M256M
–The past does not matter
–10x here, 10x there, soon you're talking REAL change.
•PC costs decline faster than any other platform
–Volume & learning curves
–PCs will be the building bricks of all future systems
8
Bumps in the Moore’s Law Road
1000000
• DRAM:
• 1988: US Anti-Dumping rules
• 1993-1995: ?? price flat
10000
100
1
1970
• Magnetic Disk
• 1965-1989:
• 1989-1996:
$/MB of DRAM
1980
1990
2000
$/MB of DISK
10,000
10x/decade
4x/3year!
100X/decade
100
1
.01
1970
1980
1990
2000
9
National Semiconductor Technology
Roadmap (size)
10000
0.4
Memory size (Mbits/chip) & Mtransistors/ chip
Mem(MBytes)
0.35
Micros Mtr/chip
Line width
1000
0.3
0.25
100
0.2
0.15
10
0.1
0.05
1
0
1995
1998
2001
2004
2007
2010
10
National Storage Technology (disks) Roadmap
(size, density, speed)
100,000
3.5" Cap. (MBytes)
1.3" Cap. (MBytes)
10,000
1,000
100
10
1
1995
2000
2005
11
Gordon Bell’s 1975 VAX planning model...
He didn’t believe it!
System Price = 5 x 3 x .04 x memory size/ 1.26
5x: Memory is 20% of cost
3x:DEC markup
.04x: $ per byte
He didn’t believe:
The projection
500$ machine
(t-1972)
K$
100,000.K$
10,000.K$
1,000.K$
100.K$
10.K$
1.K$
0.1K$
He couldn’t comprehend
implications
0.01K$
1960
16 KB
1970
1980
64 KB
256 KB
Costs declined > 20%
Single user systems didn’t come down as fast, unless you consider PDAs
VAX ran out of address bits!
1990
1 MB
2000
8 MB
12
Gordon Bell’s Seven Price Tiers
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
10$:
100$:
1,000$:
10,000$:
100,000$:
1,000,000$:
10,000,000$:
wrist watch computers
pocket/ palm computers
portable computers
personal computers (desktop)
departmental computers (closet)
site computers (glass house)
regional computers (glass castle)
SuperServer: Costs more than 100,000 $
“Mainframe” Costs more than 1M$
Must be an array of
processors,
disks, tapes
comm ports
13
Bell’s Evolution of Computer Classes
Technology enable two evolutionary paths:
1. constant performance, decreasing cost
2. constant price, increasing performance
Log Price
Mainframes (central)
Minis (dep’t.)
WSs
PCs (personals)
??
Time
1.26 = 2x/3 yrs -- 10x/decade; 1/1.26 = .8
1.6 = 4x/3 yrs --100x/decade; 1/1.6 = .62
14
Everything cyberizable will be in
Cyberspace and covered by a
hierarchy of computers!
Continent
World
Body
Region/
Cars…
phys. nets
Intranet
Home…
Campus buildings
Fractal Cyberspace: a network
of … networks of … platforms
15
Many little beat few big
$1
million
3
1 MM
$100 K
$10 K
Pico Processor
Micro
Mini
Mainframe
Nano 1 MB
10 pico-second ram
10 nano-second ram
100 MB
10 GB 10 microsecond ram
1 TB
14"




9"
5.25"
3.5"
2.5" 1.8"
10 millisecond disc
100 TB 10 second tape archive
Smoking, hairy golf ball
How to connect the many little parts?
How to program the many little parts?
Fault tolerance?
1 M SPEC marks, 1TFLOP
106 clocks to bulk ram
Event-horizon on chip
VM reincarnated
Multi-program cache,
On-Chip SMP
16
Gordon Bell’s Platform Economics
• Traditional computers: Custom or Semi-Custom
high-tech and high-touch
• New computers:
high-tech and no-touch
units
100000
10000
1000
$
100
Price (K$)
Volume (K)
App price
10
1
0.1
0.01
Mainframe
WS
Computer type
Browser
17
Software Economics: Bill’s Law
Fixed _ Cost
Price 
 Marginal_Cost
Units
• Bill Joy’s law (Sun):
Don’t write software for less than 100,000 platforms.
@10M$ engineering expense, 1,000$ price
• Bill Gate’s law:
Don’t write software for less than 1,000,000 platforms.
@10M$ engineering expense, 100$ price
• Examples:
• UNIX vs NT: 3,500$ vs 500$
• Oracle vs SQL-Server: 100,000$ vs 6,000$
• No Spreadsheet or Presentation pack on UNIX/VMS/...
• Commoditization of base Software & Hardware
18
Software Economics
• An engineer costs about
Microsoft: 9 B$
Profit
R&D
150 k$/year
24%
16%
• R&D gets [5%…15%] of budget
Tax
SG&A
• Need [3M$…1M$] revenue
13%
34%
per engineer
Product&Service
13%
Intel 16 B$
Profit
22%
R&D
8%
SG&A
11%
Tax
12%
Oracle: 3 B$
IBM: 72 B$
Product&Service
47%
Profit
Tax 6%
5%
R&D
8%
SG&A
22%
Product&Service
59%
Profit
15%
Tax
7%
Product&
Services
26%
R&D
9%
SG&A
43%
19
Grove's Law
The New Computer Industry
• Horizontal integration
is new structure
• Each layer picks best
from lower layer.
• Desktop (C/S) market
• 1991: 50%
• 1995: 75%
Function
Operation
Integration
Applications
Middleware
Baseware
Systems
Silicon & Oxide
Example
AT&T
EDS
SAP
Oracle
Microsoft
Compaq
Intel & Seagate
20
Bytes/$ DRAM
1000000
100000
1000
Doubling time 964 days
100
Growth rate 30% per year
10
2000
1998
1996
1994
1992
1990
1988
1986
1984
1982
1980
1978
1976
1974
1972
1
1970
Bytes/$
10000
21
Nathan’s 1st Law of Software
Software is a gas!
It expands to fit the container it is in!
22
Windows NT Lines of Code
100,000,000
Doubling time 866 days
Growth rate 33.9% per year
10,000,000
1,000,000
7/92
2/93
8/93
3/94
10/94
4/95
11/95
6/96
12/96
6/97
23
Browser Code Growth (MB vs time)
100
Doubling time 216 days
Growth rate 221% per year
10
1
2/95
5/95
8/95
11/95
3/96
6/96
9/96
12/96
3/97
6/97
24
Nathan’s 2nd Law of Software
Software grows until it becomes
limited by Moore’s Law
• Initial growth is rapid - like gas expanding (like
browser)
• Eventually, limited by hardware (like NT)
• Bring any processor to its knees, just before the
new model is out
25
Nathan’s 3rd Law of Software
Software growth makes Moore’s
Law possible
• That’s why people buy new hardware economic motivator
• That’s why chips get faster at same price,
instead of cheaper
• Will continue as long as there is
opportunity for new software
26
Nathan’s 4th Law of Software
Software is only limited by
human ambition & expectation
•It’s impossible to have enough
•New algorithms
•New applications and new users
•New notions of what is cool
27
The Software Crisis!
• Von Neumann had trouble
• Software is always in “crisis”
• Is there some limit to complexity?
• Will software ever grow up?
• Will the crisis ever end?
Of course
not!
28
The Perpetual Crisis
•Panacea solutions
•High level languages
•Object oriented programming
•Component software, ...
•Benefits absorbed by rising
expectations
•Software will never be easy
•Somebody will push the boundary
29
The Ultimate Computer
• Nathan’s Prognosis
•Learning more
about the brain
every day
•AI will happen
•Computers with
same power in 20
to 30 years
• Brain has no
Moore’s Law
30
Gilder’s Telecosom Law:
3x bandwidth/year for 25 more years
• Today:
• 10 Gbps per channel
• 4 channels per fiber: 40 Gbps
• 32 fibers/bundle = 1.2 Tbps/bundle
• In lab 3 Tbps/fiber (400 x WDM)
• In theory 25 Tbps per fiber
• 1 Tbps = USA 1996 WAN bisection bandwidth
1 fiber = 25 Tbps
31
God Loves Standards:
That’s why he made so many of them.
1995
CORBA
Solaris
Object
Management
Group (OMG)
1990
X/Open
UNIX
International
1985
Open software
Foundation (OSF)
Microsoft DCOM based
on OSF-DCE Technology
DCOM and ActiveX extend it
Open
Group
OSF
DCE
NT
COM
32
Moore’s Second Law
•The Cost of Fab Lines Doubles Every Generation
• Physical limit:
• Quantum Effects
at 0.25 micron now
0.05 micron seems hard
12 years, 3 generations
$10,000
M$ / Fab Line
(3 years)
• Money Limit:
hard to imagine
10 B$ line
20 B$ line
40 B$ line
$1,000
$100
$10
$1
1960
• Lithograph:
need Xray below 0.13 micron
1970
1980
1990
2000
Year
33
Constant Dollars vs Constant Work
•Constant Work:
• One SuperServer can do all the world’s
computations.
• Constant Dollars:
• The world spends 10% on information processing
• Computers are moving from 5% penetration to 50%
• 300 B$ to 3T$
• We have the patent on the byte and algorithm
34
Computer Industry Laws (rules of thumb)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Metcalf’s law
Moore’s First Law
Bell’s Computer Classes (7 price tiers)
Bell’s Platform Evolution
Bell’s Platform Economics
Bill’s Law
Software Economics
Nathan’s 4 Laws of Software
Gilder’s Law of the Telcosom.
Grove’s law (1 and 2)
Moore’s second law
Is Info-Demand Infinite?
The Death of Grosch’s Law
35
“
“
There will always be plenty of things to
compute ... With millions of people
doing complicated things.
”
memex … stores all his books, records,
and communications, and ... can be
consulted with speed and flexibility
”
“ Matchbook sized, $.05 encyclopedia ”
“ Speech to text ”
Head mounted camera, dry photography
“
”
Vannevar Bush c1945
36
Kinds Of Information Processing
Point-to-Point
Immediate
Time
Shifted
Broadcast
conversation
money
lecture
concert
mail
book
newspaper
Net
work
Data
Base
Its ALL going electronic
Immediate is being stored for analysis (so ALL database)
Analysis & Automatic Processing are being added
37
Low rent
min $/byte
Shrinks time
now or later
Shrinks space
here or there
Automate processing
knowbots
Immediate OR Time Delayed
Why Put Everything in Cyberspace?
Point-to-Point
OR
Broadcast
Network
Locate
Process
Analyze
Summarize
Data
Base
38
Databases:
Information At Your Fingertips™
Information Network™
Knowledge Navigator™
• All information will be in an online database (somewhere)
• You might record everything you
• read: 10MB/day, 400 GB/lifetime (8 tapes today)
• hear: 400MB/day, 16 TB/lifetime (3 tapes/year today)
• see: 1MB/s, 40GB/day, 1.6 PB/lifetime (maybe someday)
•
•
•
•
•
Data storage, organization, and analysis is a challenge.
That is what databases are about
DBs do a good job on “records”
Now working on text, spatial, image, and sound.
This needs lots of PROCESSING too.
39
Database Store ALL Data Types
• The Old World:
– Millions of objects
– 100-byte objects
• The New World:
• Billions of objects
• Big objects (1MB)
• Objects have behavior
(methods)
People
Name Address
David
NY
Mike
Berk
Won
Austin
People
Name Address Papers Picture Voice
David NY
Mike
Berk
Won Austin
Paperless office
Library of congress online
All information online
entertainment
publishing
business
WWW & Internet
Information Network,
Knowledge Navigator,
Information at your fingertips
40
Magnetic Storage Cheaper than Paper
• File Cabinet:
cabinet (4 drawer)
paper (24,000 sheets)
space (2x3 @ 10$/ft2)
total
250$
250$
180$
700$
3 ¢/sheet
• Disk:
disk (4 GB =)
800$
ASCII: 2 m pages
0.04 ¢/sheet (80x cheaper)
• Image:
200 k pages
0.4 ¢/sheet (8x cheaper)
• Store everything on disk
41
Crossing the Chasm
New
Market
product finds
customers
No Product
No Customers
hard
Old
Market
Boring
Competitve
Slow Growth
Old
Technology
hard
Customers
find product
New
Technology
42
Billions of Clients
• Every device will be “intelligent”
• Doors, rooms, cars, ...
• Computing will be ubiquitous
43
Billions of Clients Need
Millions of Servers
All clients are networked to servers
Clients
may be nomadic or on-demand
mobile
clients
Fast clients want faster servers Servers
fixed
clients
server
Servers provide
data,
control,
coordination
communication
super
server
Super Servers
Large Databases
High Traffic shared data
44
The Parallel Law of Computing
Grosch's Law:
1 MIPS
1$
2x $ is 4x performance
1,000 MIPS
32 $
.03$/MIPS
2x $ is
2x performance
Parallel Law:
Needs
Linear Speedup and Linear Scaleup
Not always possible
1,000 MIPS
1,000 $ 1 MIPS
1$
45
“The mainframe is dead!
… and for sure this time!”
P
R
I
C
E
Mainframe
Server
PC
46
Useful Aphorisms
• There are no silver bullets.
Fred Brooks
• There is no such thing as a heterogeneous system.
Butler Lampson
• You know you have a distributed system
when a computer you have never heard of
prevents yours from working.
Leslie Lamport
• Hubris: the Greek word for “second system.”
Bob Stewart
• Software is like entropy,
it weighs nothing,
it is hard to understand, and
it always increases.
Norman Augustine
47
Scaleable Systems
BOTH SMP and Cluster
Grow Up with SMP
4xP6 is now standard
SMP
Super Server
Grow Out with Cluster
Cluster has inexpensive parts
Departmental
Server
Cluster
of PCs
Personal
System
48
SMPs Have Advantages
• Single system image
easier to manage
easier to program
threads in shared
memory,
disk,
net
• 4x SMP is commodity
• Software capable of 16x
• Problems:
• > 4 not commodity
• scale-down problem
(starter systems expensive)
SMP
Super Server
Departmental
Server
Personal
System
49
Clusters Have Advantages
• Clients and Servers made from the same stuff.
• Inexpensive:
• Built with commodity components
• Fault tolerance:
• Spare modules mask failures
• Modular growth
• grow by adding small modules
50
Future SuperServer
4T Machine
Challenge:
Manageability
Programmability
Security
Availability
Scaleability
Affordability
As easy as a single system
1,000 discs =
10 Terrorbytes
100 Nodes
1 Tips
High Speed Network ( 10 Gb/s)
Array of 1,000 4B machines
1 bips processors,
1 BB DRAM
10 BB disks,
1 tapes
1 Bbps comm lines
A few MegaBucks
100 Tape Transports
= 1,000 tapes
= 1 PetaByte
51