Communications of the ACM
Wanted: 40 Trillion Gigabytes of Open Storage, Stat!
Credit: PC World
IDC predicts a 50-fold increase in the total amount of digitally stored data between 2010 and 2020, which means that by the end of the decade the world's data footprint will reach 40 trillion gigabytes. Conventional mechanical storage devices such as USB flash drives, solid-state drives, and optical drives will evolve to help reach this milestone. Standard hard drives will remain the dominant storage mechanism for the world's data in the near future, say Gartner analysts John Monroe and Joseph Unsworth.
Hard drive performance and capacity will continue to see improvements in the coming years, such as helium-filled drives aimed at enterprise and cloud storage systems that offer a 40-percent increase in drive capacity and a 20-percent improvement in energy efficiency. In addition, heat-assisted magnetic recording and self-ordered magnetic arrays could deliver a 10-fold or greater increase in areal density. In the future, consumers will use optical media mostly as a physical delivery system for entertainment and software, and occasionally as emergency boot media.
By 2016, the amount of personal data stored in the cloud will rise to 36 percent, compared to just 7 percent today.
From PC World
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Abstracts Copyright © 2013 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
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