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Storage technology, moving at rapid rates

By David Pendery
InfoWorld Electric

Storage technology moves at a rapid rate, even keeping pace with the oft-quoted Moore's doubles every 18 months. Optics, materials science, magnetism, electricity, thermal technology, information processing, and miniaturization are all being harnessed to increase magnetic and optical disk densities, information-sharing across platforms and data throughput to keep up with demanding corporate storage requirements. Currie Munce, director of storage systems and technology at IBM's Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, Calif., sat down with InfoWorld Reporter David Pendery to discuss storage trends.

InfoWorld: What are the most important technology trends in the storage industry?

Munce: We are moving, since 1991, at increasing [disk capacity] at 60 percent per year, which means it doubles every 18 months. That drives not only the capacities [we] can put into a fixed size but also addresses cost per megabyte. So we are seeing a corresponding reduction in price per megabyte and corresponding increase in the capacities.

InfoWorld: What are the most promising technologies to overcome disk-drive-density limitations?

Munce: There is no physical reason we cannot design [hard disks] to have at least 100Mb or a terabit per square inch. But if we use the same materials and electronics that we use today we will run into limitations at 20 or 40 [megabits per square inch].

Logically, what will happen is that we will change the materials and the electronics to allow us to continue [increasing densities]. We believe that we should be able to extend with these changes to about 100Mb per square inch, which is 25 times the [area] density shipping today.

InfoWorld: Is the idea of pushing processing power and intelligence down to the drive and array being realized?

Munce: This is principally still in the research laboratories. It's a big change that has to come not just from the device; it has to come from the application and from an OS standpoint, and so you will have to architect large changes.

You will first see that [development] in storage subsystems. You will see some information functionality being pushed [off the CPU], and we will see that evolution continue as more of that processing power and more of that communication is pushed further down into the storage hierarchy.

InfoWorld: What are the sources of the "data explosion" in recent years?

Munce: People are connected, and the more you are connected the more you have access to information. I think there are two things going on. One is this 60 percent growth in capacity has given us capacities and cheap storage that allows us to envision new applications, so we can store more information.

At the same time we are getting connected to more information, we have access to more information, and we want to use more information. So our needs and demands are going up, and our capability to have it cost-effectively is going up, and those are driving this huge demand.

InfoWorld: Can you characterize technology development in the storage industry as primarily competitive or primarily cooperative?

Munce: It's a mixture. I would define two classes. The precompetitive, things that are out maybe seven to 10 years [until availability], and there we cooperate through two mechanisms. One is the various universities doing work in this area, and also the National Storage Industrial Consortium. So we do [cooperatively] interact at densities around 100Gb per square inch.

In the more near term, it is very competitive. Competitive for people, competitive to get to the next breakthroughs. It is [in the near term] as or more competitive in technology development as in product [development].

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