The future of storage tech: Can the tech of the past influence the tech of tomorrow?
Technology Untangled
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
5.0 • 69 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2024
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, we’re taking a look at how the explosion in our demand for data storage has led to needing more capacity than ever before, and whether long-vanished ideas from our computing past could influence technological innovation in the future.
In 2022 the world generated 97 Zettabytes of data. It has been predicted that, by 2025, that number will almost have doubled to 181 Zettabytes. Although at the rate generative AI and machine learning is expanding, that figure could be even higher.
As the Head of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise storage division, Senior Vice President Patrick Osborne has storage at the forefront of everything he does. He sees just how much his customers' needs are growing every year and is always actively looking for new methods and fabrics to meet those needs.
Alongside those requirements for greater data storage also sits the need for faster data processing - and there are a number of technologies nearing maturity which could revolutionise the space. Aidong Xu is Head of Semiconductor Capability at Cambridge Consultants, and is keeping a close eye on these technologies, especially in the memory space. For him, the big challenge is combining performance with efficiency.
However, whilst we’re looking at the future of data storage, it’s hard not to draw parallels with the past. Colin Eby from the National Museum of Computing knows a thing or two about that, guiding us through the history of the storage technologies which marked our pathway to today - some of which, in the decades since they fell out of favour, may have come round once more.
But what if the future of data storage isn’t data at all, but something more organic. Mark Bathe is a professor of biological engineering at MIT, specialising in DNA storage, and what that can mean for the future of our digital archiving needs.
Sources and statistics cited in this episode:
Zettabytes usage - https://www.statista.com/statistics/871513/worldwide-data-created/
Sales of storage units - https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1251240/worldwide-storage-unit-sales-volume
Hard drive shipment figures - https://www.statista.com/statistics/398951/global-shipment-figures-for-hard-disk-drives/
Random access DNA memory using Boolean search in an archival file storage system - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-021-01021-3
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So if you take a flash drive that people are familiar with sort of on the order of a sugar cube or something, |
| 0:09.0 | and if you made that out of DNA, it would hold an exabyte of data. |
| 0:15.0 | Data. It's kind of what we're all here for, right? |
| 0:19.0 | At the end of the day, processing and storing data is the |
| 0:21.5 | cornerstone of the modern industrialized world. But the way we deal with that data is changing |
| 0:27.1 | at an astronomical pace. Supercomputers, HPC, AI, they are all changing our relationship with how |
| 0:34.4 | we store and use data. And testing whether our current suite of technology, such as RAM, hard drives, and SSDs, are up to the task. |
| 0:43.9 | So in this episode, we'll be looking at how far we've come since the early days of computing |
| 0:48.2 | and how that's influencing where we look for future technological advances. |
| 1:05.0 | Thank you. where we look for future technological advances. You're listening to Technology Untangled, |
| 1:07.8 | a show which looks at the rapid evolution of technology |
| 1:10.5 | and unravels the way it's changing our world. |
| 1:13.6 | We all hosts Michael Bird and Aubrey Lovell. |
| 1:20.6 | We always like to start with some statistics, and the ones around data are particularly impressive. |
| 1:26.6 | So here we go. The total amount of |
| 1:29.6 | data generated by humans is growing extremely quickly. According to the market research firm |
| 1:36.0 | statistic, in 2023, we generated 120 zetabytes, with a z, up from 97 ZZZZZabytes in 2022. |
| 1:47.1 | In 2024, it's likely to be around, get this, 147 Zettabytes and 181 Zettabytes by 2025. |
| 1:58.4 | That's a lot of growth. |
| 2:00.5 | And with the explosion in Generative AI, the real number might be even |
| 2:05.1 | higher. In terms of the actual storage, the numbers are just as impressive. And a follow-up report, |
| 2:11.5 | Statista claimed that 2.6 billion data storage units have been sold in recent years. However, |
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