10 out of 10

Diamond will have processed 10 petabytes of data over its 10 years of research and innovation.

Today, on the 10th day of the 10th month of the year, Diamond will have processed 10 petabytes of data over its 10 years of research and innovation. To put this into perspective, 10 petabytes (1 x 1016 bytes) is equivalent to over 2 million DVDs, 200 million four-draw filing cabinet filled with text, the entire memory of four human brains or 20,000 years of MP3 songs playing continuously.

Collected during experiments on over 30 beamlines and integrated facilities, in the past 10 years Diamond data has fostered breakthroughs in fields ranging from health, the environment and engineering to astrophysics and archaeology. And new beamlines, improved capabilities and growing numbers of users mean that Diamond is processing more data than ever before. In fact, Diamond’s Data Acquisition team processed almost 2 petabytes of data – a fifth of all data processed at Diamond during its working lifetime – in 2016 alone.