3. Multimedia

Storage technologies

  • decreasing size and price
    • Processors continue to decrease in price.  We are starting to see an increase in convergence of technologies. Take my first “Smart phone” it is a poor cousin to my current phone. My new phone does everything I can think of it but in 5 years time, I will look back and wonder how I ever did without……?
  • increasing capacity
    • Capacity doubles every 18 months following Moore’s Law. This means that we have seen a dramatic increase in available storage capacity. What will you fill your first Petabyte drive with ?
  • Optical storage
    • CD, DVD & BluRay we are used to these sharing the same physical size but the capacity of each radically different. They accomplish this by using lasers with a much smaller wavelength and more advanced electronics. There is discussion that Bluray will be the last optical storage medium, however, there may be a 6TB successor.
  • Magnetic storage
  • Holographic storage
    • The concept of Holographic storage has been around for quite a while (1960s), we are only now starting to make progress.
    • Holographic storage has a high capacity, fast access times.
    • Stores data in a number of 3D images
    • Hundreds of images may be saved in different layers/full depth of medium
    • Information can be stored in layers (throughout the full depth of the medium)
    • Information can be read a layer at a time (in Parallel) rather than as a sequence of bits