¶ Introducing Bytes in Computing
And now it's time for a tiny bite of knowledge In a world with 32 and 64-bit software .
Enter in the byte , that's byte with a Y Roar Roar . So , Jodi , what is a bite when we're talking about computers ? What is a byte ?
A byte is a measure of digital storage , and typically what this means is that one single byte is equal to eight bits .
And a byte usually represents a single character , such as a letter , a number in computer
¶ Understanding Storage Units
language .
And fun fact . So like these 8 bits . What those bits refer to are like the binary 0s and 1s , right , so like if you really break it down or you think about like the matrix , where they've got a bunch of 0s and 1s floating down on the screen , all those little zero and one binaries . Each one of them is a single bit and eight of those equals a byte .
Yeah , you commonly hear about bytes used for computer memory or storage terms . So I mean it's pretty often that those of us geeks and precision agriculture are sitting down and we're going , hey , how big is your storage there ? Do you get a 64 gigabyte , one terabyte , two terabyte
¶ GK's Petabyte Server Storage
and over in Halstead we even talk about having a petabyte of storage on our servers for imagery data .
How many gigs of storage is a petabyte ?
Let's start by backing up and talking about how much is a kilobyte ? So you've got a byte , then you've got a kilobyte that's a thousand bytes . Then you've got a megabyte , which is a million bytes . You've got a gigabyte , which is a billion bytes .
And then a terabyte . A terabyte is-hmm , or one quadrillion bytes , and a petabyte is 1,000 terabytes 1,000 terabytes .
I mean , I'm thinking about like I've got a USB stick here that's sitting with one terabyte of data .
That's a lot of storage . You have a USB stick with one terabyte storage .
Mm-hmm .
Yes , I do .
That's amazing , isn't that amazing ? It is amazing , yes , very amazing . Got a lot of stuff on there , lots of pictures , that's great , but it's still a terabyte , and a petabyte , you said , is a thousand terabytes . A thousand terabytes , that's a lot . Now , on that petabyte of storage , we actually have our data on the servers backed up .
Yes , we do , but you got to realize , to put things in context , for what's over there for data , I think we're currently missing . What is it , Jodi ? Eight states in the United States for data on those servers , something like that . So we have the majority of the United States on there .
We've got at least three provinces in Canada , and we're talking Alberta , Saskatchewan and Manitoba , so provinces that have rather large land masses to them .
The data that is stored up there includes any shapefile formats that help show us where township sections , ranges , are located , as well as all of the , for example , nape imagery that we would have in the United States . That's a United States program .
Unfortunately , in Canada you're not going to have that , but those are images that are flown once a year or once every two years . It's very detailed imagery and it takes up a lot of room , especially these newer images , as the as the newer imagery is more detailed and contain more bands of light than the old ones used to . We
¶ Agricultural Imagery Libraries
also have over there , you know , Landsat data that's 30 meter resolution , and those libraries go back to like 1984 . And we've also got Sentinel data that's 10 meter resolution . Okay , so we've got a lot of storage , a lot of storage . You could even say we took a bite out of storage .
So , even though you and I do Tiny Bytes , the GK office has a big bite of storage . It's like a monster , monster bite .
It's a monster bite over there . Let's back up , though , and talk about that petabyte that's over there . So , as I was saying , we've got all of you know , we've got all of that NAIP imagery . In addition , we've got Lidar data .
Some of that data , and we pretty much have got Lidar data for wherever our clients would have asked for it around the United States . We also have two different libraries of satellite information Landsat data that goes all the way back to 1984 .
Those images were not recorded as frequently throughout the growing season and it's 30 meter resolution data , but it goes back to 1984 . Whereas on the Sentinel data library we have more images in season , that library only goes back to about 2016 , maybe 17 , right in that range , and that data is 10 meter resolution data , so it's more detailed than that Landsat .
We have more images , more detail , but fewer years for the Sentinel data and the Landsat library has a much longer history to it and less detailed and fewer images during the growing season and really , when you start thinking about all those imagery components , that really starts adding up to how much what is using the data on our servers over there and , in case
you are an ADMS user , when you go into our servers to download data , to make drainage maps
¶ Storage Challenges in Precision Agriculture
or to automate zones .
You are going into that server and getting those data out of there , so of course , like with the Landsat images versus the Sentinel , because Landsat is less detailed it's got a lower resolution , so 30 meters versus 10 meter resolution .
It's going to take less bytes of storage for each of those Landsat images versus Sentinel Correct the more detailed the image is , generally speaking , the more data it's going to take to store them .
That's something we need to really think about in precision agriculture . So we think a lot about satellite imagery and those comparisons that Jodi's just making between Landsat and Sentinel data . One of the things that we need to think about is this push towards going to drones , because those pictures that are coming off of drones take up a pile of space .
Yeah , we can run them in our software and and work with them in our software . That's great . But , boy , you put one image on a one terabyte jump drive and it doesn't take a whole lot , very many images to take up a lot of that space . So space and what exactly a byte is , what exactly a terabyte is ?
A megabyte , gigabyte , petabyte it's interesting to really think about and the challenges that come along with that storage . So this might be a tiny byte . So this might be a tiny bite .
¶ Tiny Bite, Monster Bite Conclusion
Over in Halstad we have a petabyte which is a monster bite . Tune in next time for a tiny bite of knowledge from GK Technology , where we have a map and an app for that .