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One of the world’s strongest men, Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, has put on yet another amazing feat. But this one was in a rather unlikely place – SC24, a computing conference.
At 2024’s SuperComputing Conference in Atlanta last week, Björnsson deadlifted 282.624 petabytes (PB) of solid-state drives. According to Business Wire, this is equivalent to a physical weight of 996 pounds (452kg) and is the most data ever lifted.
The amount of data is almost incomprehensible. In more realistic terms, 283PB is equal to 282,000 terabytes or 282,000,000 gigabytes.
The deadlift was sponsored by VDURA, an AI and high-performance computing management company. The drives Björnsson lifted at SC24 were from Phison, which creates flash storage solutions.
Phison supplied its Pascari D205Vs, which can hold up to 122.88TB each. They boast a sequential read speed of 14,600 MB per second and a sequential write speed of 3,200 MB per second.
“Today, we set a new record for the largest amount of data ever lifted,” VDURA’s CEO Ken Claffey said. “Going forward, we are setting the industry standard for reliability and scalability, with the strength to support our customers and their evolving workloads.”
Michael Wu, general manager and president of Phison US added: “We’re proud to partner with VDURA to support this record-setting lift with our ultra-capacity Pascari drives.
“Phison recently unveiled the first PCIe Gen5 122.88TB class drives, and now alongside VDURA we are again pioneers in a new milestone to showcase the true impact of mixing optimal strength, durability and capacity.”
Who is Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson?
Björnsson is an Icelandic athlete who has won various strongman titles, including the World’s Strongest Man in 2018. He is the third most decorated strongman in history and is the only person to win the Arnold Strongman Classic, Europe’s Strongest Man, and World’s Strongest Man in the same year.
He has also appeared in Game of Thrones as Gregor Clegane nicknamed the Mountain. The character is a knight with a violent temper.
Feature image credit: VDURA
