The Computers of Star Trek (6 page)

Sorting through the technobabble, we're forced to conclude that isolinear optical chips are used for RAM (the references to core memory), hard drive space,
and
data transfer (the references to floppies, the PADDs, etc). If pushed, we shrug and say that isolinear optical chips are used for everything. Each chip is a nanoprocessor with associated memory, and each chip also serves as a disk drive. Of course, each chip includes all required input/output and memory buses. Sure. And LaForge and O'Brien crawl through a Jeffries tube with socket wrenches whenever one of these chips needs fixing.

Our future will be with invisible nanotech computers. These computers will incorporate processing functions, memory, and storage space. They may do everything, just as the isolinear chips supposedly do everything. But in reality, our chips will be interconnected in a widely distributed network of processors and storage media. There will be no need to store massive amounts of information in any one location.

Each computer core contains 2,048 dedicated modules, and each module contains 144 isolinear optical storage chips, making a total of 294,912 chips. Each chip contains 2.15 kiloquads of memory in standard holographic format, according to the
Technical Manual
. Multiplying our two numbers together, we determine that the
Enterprise
has a total memory storage capacity of 634,060 kiloquads. This number happens to correspond very closely to the 630,000 kiloquads supposedly in each memory module.

At this point, it appears that there's a slight flaw in the manual. Either the total capacity of each module is approximately 630,000
kiloquads,
^f
or with 2.15 kiloquads per chip, the total ship capacity is 630,000 kiloquads. For simplicity, let's assume the latter.

So what's a kiloquad? We don't know. The designers of
Star Trek
dare not jump on a limb and try to define it. According to the
Star Trek Encyclopedia
, “No, we don't know how many bytes are in a kiloquad. We don't even want to know. The reason the term was invented was specifically to avoid describing the data capacity of
Star Trek's
computers in 20th century terms.”
⁶

The series' writers feared defining the kiloquad too closely for obvious reasons: people might calculate whether the ship's computers were adequate to do all the fantastic things the writers were making them do. However, that hasn't stopped
Star Trek
fans from trying to figure out the size of a kiloquad, and being fans ourselves, we'll play the same game.

With kilo defined as one thousand, the meaningful part of the term is quad. Checking a dictionary reveals that the only numerical term involving quad is quadrillion, which is defined as a thousand trillion (10
¹⁵
). Thus, it's easy enough to deduce (as have many other Trekkers) that a kiloquad equals 1,000 quadrillion bytes. Breaking it down further, a kiloquad's the same as a million trillion bytes (10
¹⁸
bytes).

As first seen in the original series episode “The Naked Now,” isolinear optical chips are approximately the size of a 3.5-inch floppy disk. We'll use that standard for our model. In the
Star Trek
universe, an isolinear optical storage chip, approximately the size of a 3.5-inch floppy disk, contains 2.15 kiloquads of memory, which we assume to be 2.15 x 10
¹⁸
bytes. These kiloquads are in “standard holographic format.” Is this plausible?

As we mentioned in the first chapter, many computer scientists predict that holographic storage units will be the memory units of the future. Lambertus Hesselink of Stanford University believes that a cube a centimeter on a side eventually may store a terabyte of data (10
¹²
bytes).
⁷

Keeping in mind that a floppy disk doesn't have a depth of one centimeter, we can still approximate the amount of holographic storage contained on our kiloquad floppy disk.

First, suppose that Hesselink is correct. Suppose also that future scientists will do a bit better than Hesselink's prediction and will store a terabyte in a volume of 1 by 1 by *¼ centimeter.

Recalling that one inch equals 2.54 centimeters, we quickly determine that 3.5 inches yields 8.89 centimeters. If we store a terabyte of data in 1 by 1 by ¼ centimeter, then we end up with something like the holographic floppy disk in
Figure 2.6
.

But 81 x 10
¹²
bytes per chip is not even close to 2.15 kiloquads, which is 2.15 x 10
¹⁸
bytes. On the other hand, if scientists predict today that we'll store a terabyte in a cubic centimeter, then perhaps within three or four hundred years, we'll store 2.15 kiloquads in “standard holographic format.” It seems possible. Further, it's quite possible that the
Enterprise
has a total of 634,060 kiloquads of memory and/or storage capacity.

That's a
lot
of memory. Which is why the writers of
Star Trek
are astute in not assigning a value to a kiloquad!

Which leads us to ask if so much memory is necessary.

In “Wolf in the Fold” (
TOS
), Captain Kirk has the ship's computer search for crimes similar to those Mr. Scott is accused of committing. He also asks the computer to search for certain keywords like “Redjack.” In both cases, the computer finds matches on other worlds over a period of centuries. This implies that the computer contains a vast amount of information about life on Federation planets over the centuries.

In “The Neutral Zone” (
TNG
), Clair Raymond searches for her descendants using the computer. Not only does she find her family tree, but she locates information about her grandson many times removed, his photo, and where he lives. Leading us to believe that the ship's computer maintains extensive files about every citizen in the Federation.

In “Eye of the Needle” (
VGR
), the crew of
Voyager
contacts a Romulan science vessel through a wormhole that cuts through both space and time. They tell their plight to a Romulan scientist, Telek R‘Mor. He promises to send a chip containing information
about
Voyager
to the Federation in 2371. But
Voyager's
computer reveals that Telek R'Mor died before the delivery date. Implying that information about Romulans is also available in the ship's memory banks.

Throughout all the
Next Generation, Deep Space Nine
, and
Voyager
adventures, the main computer is used to access famous plays, music, and books composed over the centuries. Extensive medical data on all known species belonging to the Federation is stored in the core memory. Thousands of battles fought by Federation starships are kept on file as reference, as are records of the adventures of other starships. As noted in “Legacy” (
TNG
), the computer stores every crewmember's complete DNA pattern. The computer seems to contain all knowledge and records compiled by the Federation. Is this possible, even with 630,000—or 1,290,240,000—kiloquads of memory?

Futurist Michael Dertouzos describes information in terms of units called LOCs.
⁸
One LOC is all the data contained in the United States Library of Congress. If we count only words, not pictures, films, or sound recordings, Dertouzos estimates this to be 100 terabytes (100 x 10
¹²
bytes). Making one LOC equal to 10
¹⁴
bytes.

Dertouzos estimates that all the information in the world, including all movies, sound recordings, individual data files, government files, corporate databases and so on, is approximately 10,000 LOCs, or 10
¹⁸
bytes. This is the same as one kiloquad. Quite a coincidence.

Jumping three hundred years into the future, we're informed that the Federation consists of approximately 150 star systems (
First Contact
), with a population of less than one trillion beings (“The Last Outpost,”
TNG
, and other episodes). Assuming that a number of those star systems have more than one inhabited planet, there might be 250 total worlds in the Federation, with approximately four billion people per world.

Many of those worlds have much smaller populations. Moreover, many of them began as, or still are, colonies of various space-going races. Still, even if we assume that every planet in the Federation has the same history and population of today's Earth, the total knowledge of those worlds would be 250 kiloquads. Now, since three hundred years have passed and interstellar exploration has added huge amounts of information to our knowledge of the universe, let's multiply that information by 1,000. Giving us a universal library of 1,000
^*
250 kiloquads (which is the same as 2.5 x 10
²³
bytes).

Each isolinear optical storage chip contains 2.15 kiloquads. Now, 250 kiloquads divided by 2.15 kiloquads per chip yields 116 chips. And then, multiplying by 1,000, we get a total of 116,000 chips required to store the universal library. Fortunately, each redundant computer core of the
Enterprise
contains over 290,000 chips, a more than ample amount.

Of course, if the ship's computer is in constant contact with other Federation computers, there would be no need to store all information in the known universe. In our world today, someone wanting a dose of Brazilian music need only hop onto the Internet, search for Brazilian music, and launch an audio player. There's no need to store Brazilian music on your PC. Why can't people do this sort of thing on
Star Trek
? If Picard can talk to another starship captain with realtime visual and audio clarity, why can't he listen to a concerto that's stored on another starship?

We need to mention that in the
Voyager
episode “Twisted,” the ship contacts a strange being that exists as a spacial distortion. After some unusual plot turns, the creature exchanges information with the ship's library. We're told that the entity has written twenty million gigaquads of information into the ship's computer.

Here we go again. What the heck is a gigaquad? And how much information is in twenty million of them? Does this episode make sense?

First, giga means 10
⁹
, and we remember that a quad is a quadrillion, 10
¹⁵
bytes. So one gigaquad is 10
⁹
x 10
¹⁵
bytes, or 10
²⁴
bytes. Twenty-million gigaquads means that we have (2 * 10
⁷
) (10
²⁴
bytes). We're in the neighborhood of 2 x 10
³¹
bytes of information. That's more than the 2.5 x 10
²³
bytes available in the ship's library. Remember that 116,000 of the available 290,000 chips are used to store the ship's library. But even if we store two entire libraries in 232,000 chips, the
Voyager
computer wouldn't come close to having 2* 10
³¹
bytes of information. There's no way that the entity can write to more storage space than
Voyager
has. It would take roughly ten million
Voyagers
to store twenty-million gigaquads.

Since we're discussing information, we ought to mention that despite a communications system that somehow works instantly between star systems (impossible by all known physical laws, even on
Star Trek
) it's still inconceivable to expect the database and memory files of one starship to be redundant—that is, exactly identical and always up to date—with that of another ship. Or with all the ships in Starfleet.

Let's assume the
Enterprise
is in constant communication with Starfleet headquarters, and that all information recorded on the ship's computer—including every log entry, every medical note made by Dr. Crusher, every promotion, every new species encountered, every new planet surveyed—is instantly transmitted to the computers at headquarters. Before this information can be sent to other starships (assuming they too are in constant instantaneous contact with Starfleet command), it must be sorted, studied, and processed by Starfleet personnel. Otherwise, on every Federation starship, we'd have a duplicate Dr. Moriarty trying to take over from the holodeck (“Ship in a Bottle,”
TNG
).