Google’s Project 10^100

Submission form

Have a great idea for helping a lot of people? Submit it here.

The first three questions are required for submitting your Project 10^100 idea, but we won’t display any of this personal data on the website or disclose it to third parties without your explicit permission.

Note: Please note that the information you have entered will be lost if you leave the page without submitting the idea.

1. Name

John Oberschelp

2. Mailing address:

1516 Sixth Ave., San Francisco, CA  94122

3. Email address:

john@oberschelp.net

4. Language:

English

All this information will appear on the public site as part of your submission.

5. Nickname: (How you want to be named as the author of this submission?)

John Oberschelp

6. City:

San Francisco

7. Country:

USA

8. Your idea’s name (maximum 50 characters):

HOFS - a Hard disk Optimized File System

9. Please select a category that best describes your idea.

Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?

Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?

Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?

Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?

Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?

Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?

Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?

@ Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.

6 small boxes, 1 great idea…

10. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)

We want 4 second boot times, unnoticeable application launch times and database access to files, so we need a new hard disk file system.

11. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words)

I propose a new file system, HOFS, designed to dramatically speed up PCs, by dramatically speeding up hard disk IO, the slowest part of a modern PC, by far.

To accomplish this, HOFS would do two things:

1) To eliminate many disk accesses completely (all directory and metadata accesses), when the partition  is initially mounted (or mapped), all metadata (including directory data) would be read from a contiguous block, and maintained in memory. A drive with 200,000 files would use 40MB of memory, at an average of 200 bytes of dense metadata per file. At 60MB/sec, this would take 2/3 of a second to load.

2) To replace many random disk reads with sequential track reads (providing shorter seek times, and very little rotational latency due to modern cylinder and head skewing), histories would be generated of sets of files typically read in sequentially, and during slack time they would be placed in a contiguous block on the drive, probably with file type specific compression. During a read request for a file within a history, the entire set of files could be read in speculatively.

If a HOFS partition is being booted (for example), a contiguous block would be read in, consisting of files needed to boot the OS previously. This is around 100MB compressed, read in at 60MB/s and decompressed at 200MB/s for a total of just under 3 seconds. Other boot functions could be done concurrently, as the processor is mostly idle during hard drive IO.

In addition to speed, because file metadata access will happen at RAM speed instead of hard disk speed, HOFS will be a fast database file system. For example, in just a second you could find all audio files with “john” in the name changed in the last week.

12. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words)

Today’s PC has evolved substantially from the PC of 15 years ago. It’s CPU is 300 times faster, it has 100 times more memory, and it has 200 times more hard disk space. But it’s hard drive (already the slowest part of a PC by far) is only 5 times faster.

What has been done to adjust for these changes? Not so much. The file systems for both Windows (NTFS) and Linux (ext2) were both designed in 1993, 15 years ago. So when today’s PC could be using its vastly faster CPU and vastly larger RAM to partially mitigate the problem of the slow mechanical hard drive, it is instead waiting for the hard drive; it’s just waiting 200 times faster than it used to! This is wasted human and computer time and energy that HOFS, a rethought file system, could harness.

13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (maximum 150 words)

Users of the 1 billion computers sold in the last 5 years and the 1 billion more people who will probably become users in the next 5 years would benefit from faster computing with the same hardware. That’s less time and less energy. And if the boot time can be made so short as to not be a barrier, much more energy could be saved by software that would, in cooperation with the OS, automatically shut down the computer after a period of inactivity or after a simple indication from the user, only to bring it back to the same user state when needed in just a few seconds.

14. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (maximum 150 words)

HOFS needs a home in the form of a web site and an open source project at a project hosting site to oversee it’s design, development, promotion, and distribution. A funding source would provide credibility and provide stability via a budget that would pay for a manager, and a few developers or contractors/contracts, any necessary legal service, any licensing, or what ever might come up.

15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words)

Most PC users would run a utility that would convert their file system to HOFS overnight. New PCs would ship with HOFS. Smart people would think of great new ways to use rapid access to file metadata. For example (a minimally thought out syntax for example purposes only), a “path” of “c://(name=*.png)&(age<2days)” would give Windows users “directory” access to all png files less than 2 days old. HOFS would inspire other optimized file systems for other media, for example COFS for CDs, or USBOFS for USB drives.

16. I agree to Project 10^100’s terms of service

Yes

The following fields are optional:

17. You may also submit 1 YouTube video (max 30 seconds long) explaining your project. View video guidelines

Enter the URL of your YouTube video.

18. If you’d like to recommend a specific organization, or the ideal type of organization, to execute your plan, please do so here. (maximum 50 words)

I would like to at least help get the ball rolling.

19. Email me when the voting period begins.

Yes

20. If my idea isn’t chosen in this program, please contact me about organizations that are interested in funding it.

Yes