Author: Dieter Buerssner
Date: 01:18:49 03/03/05
Go up one level in this thread
On March 02, 2005 at 18:59:18, Axel Schumacher wrote:
>I have two question regarding the storage requirements for information; I hope
>somebody can help me with answering them. Please excuse if my questions are
>stupid.
>
>1. For each data-point (e.g. let's say the position of a pawn on the chessboard)
>one requires 1 bit (either 0 or 1). Right? However, the information does not
>include where the pawn is located. So, how much data has to be stored to
>describe e.g. the position of a pawn?
Do you want to store it with minimal space? A pawn can be on 48 squares, so you
need a bit less than 6 bit. With another method you can store the position of
zero to 48 pawns in 48 bits.
For storing a normal DNA sequence, 2 bits are needed for each base pair. Note
that you do not need to store the position ("this is the 12345th base pair in
this string") as well - this would be given implicetly. I am no specialist in
DNA, but I think even less than two bits is needed on average, because there are
only 20 different triplets? If yes, or if this is the case most of the time, you
save space by using this knowledge. All sort of compression will be possible, I
guess.
>2. How much calculation power is need to calculate a certain amount of data? I
>know, this this may sound a little bit abstract and, of course, it depends on
>the time-factor. But let's you have 1 terabyte of data in a data-spreadsheet.
>What calculation-power (e.g. amount of average desktop computers) is needed to
>make simple algebraic calculations with such a data-table?
If you only have to scan through the data, say to count the number of each
triplet, one terabyte can be processed with a (almost) normal computer in
reasonable time. This would be something that computeer scientists call O(N).
O(N^2) things will not be possible at all, even with the fastest computers. A
typical data-spreadsheet program will most probably not work on such amounts of
data. You would probably need to hire somebody, who can write the program.
Otherwise you will end like the people in the German Yellow pages ads:
"Vielleicht hätte er jemand fragen sollen, der sich damit auskennt."
Regards,
Dieter
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.