How long will it take to fill a 64-bit computer to capacity if you bought 1GB of RAM every second?

Answer 1

63

Answer 2

It will take precisely 17,179,869,184 seconds, which equates to roughly 544 years and 5 months.

The numbers are purely academic as the maximum is a theoretical maximum. There simply isn't enough 64-bit RAM on the entire planet to fill just one 64-bit machine to capacity, never mind all of them, so there's no practical way to test if it would actually work at full capacity. Maybe in 500 years time we'll find out, but I'm going to stick my neck out and say it won't work at all, not with the current technology at least.

The numbers in full:

Theoretical maximum memory capacity of a 64-bit machine:

264 bytes = 16 exbibytes = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes.

Number of bytes in a gigabyte:

230 bytes = 1 gigabyte = 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Maximum number of seconds to fill machine at 1 gigabyte per second:

264 / 230 = 17,179,869,184 seconds.

Approximate number of seconds per mean tropical year:

365 days, 5 hours 48 minutes and 45 seconds = 31,556,925 seconds per year.

Average number of seconds per month:

31,556,925 / 12 = 2,629,743.75 seconds per month.

Other values:

86,400 seconds per day.

3,600 seconds per hour.

60 seconds per minute.