The Next Decade In Storage

Esther Schindler writes: In this article, Robin Harris predicts what storage will be like in 2025. And, he says, the next 10 years will be the most exciting and explosive in the history of data storage. For instance: "There are several forms of [Resistive RAM], but they all store data by changing the resistance of a memory site, instead of placing electrons in a quantum trap, as flash does. RRAM promises better scaling, fast byte-addressable writes, much greater power efficiency, and thousands of times flash's endurance. RRAM's properties should enable significant architectural leverage, even if it is more costly per bit than flash is today. For example, a fast and high endurance RRAM cache would simplify metadata management while reducing write latency."

Comments

Maybe

[jandrese]

There are a dozen different memory technologies that "in 10 years time" will revolutionize everything. I'll believe it when I see it. Until this, this gets filed away with Bubble RAM and whatnot in the "will be nice if it ever pans out" file.

Re:Maybe

[mlts]

Storage is in tiers, and each tier is different. From the stuff in registers to what is stashed on Amazon Glacier, and everything in between (RAM, SSD, HDD, etc.) A revolution at one strata will have a completely different impact than a revolution at another level.

Take RRAM, MRAM, or some random access memory technology which is up to speed with DRAM, except cheaper and doesn't need refreshed. This would end up not just supplanting RAM, but also making inroads on SSD, depending how inexpensive it is. Will this fundamentally change computing? Somewhat, although I doubt that RRAM would ever drop near the price of HDD or even SSD.

Or, take WAN bandwidth. If the average home had terabytes of bandwidth, a phone had the same, this would change things fundamentally. Cloud storage could go from stashing occasional files to being a tier 2 NAS, especially with proper client security and encryption. However, this is extremely unlikely as well.

Perhaps a tape drive company is able to make reliable media with the bit density of hard disk platters, and is able to fit 100 TB on a cartridge for $10, with drives costing $500. Far-fetched, but if this happens, it would have a different impact to computing than memory costing 1/100 of what it does... but it would be significant.

Improvements in the middle tiers may or may not help things. Bigger hard drives will have to deal with currently small I/O pipes, making array rebuild times longer, and forcing businesses to go past RAID 6 to ensure the drives have protection when things get degraded. Already, some arrays can take 24 hours to rebuild from one lost HDD, and if capacity increases without I/O coming with it, we might have to have RAID levels that factor in not just two levels of parity, but three or four, perhaps with another level just for bit rot checking.

So, when someone says that there are storage breakthroughs... it really depends on the tier that the breakthrough happens at.

Re:Maybe

[mcrbids]

Get off my lawn, blah blah...

Meanwhile, flash has revolutionized storage. We saw at least a 95% reduction in query times on our DB servers when we switched from RAID5 15K SAS drives to RAID1 flash SSDs. Floppies are history, and 32 GB thumb drives cost $5. SSDs have been catching up to their HDD brethren, now just 2-4 years behind the cost/capacity curve, and spinning rust has just about reached EOL, with Shingled Hard drives that make you choose between write speeds and write capacity being a necessary compromise for increased capacity.

I have no idea why you'd be so dismissive.

Re:In other news, NSA funds storage technology

[sabri]

NSA guy sees "metadata management" and has a wet dream.

That's not metadata as you think of it. It's the metadata associated with storage.

Technologically maybe...

[Kjella]

Practically I don't feel it's very significantly different anymore. Sure a little faster CPU, a little faster GPU, a little more RAM, bigger and cheaper SSDs but it's mostly the same. To feel that big a difference what you had before must have been rather crap, I still remember how adding a Gravis Ultrasound turned PC sound from shit to excellent. Or adding a new graphics card so you could have transparent, splashing water in Morrowind. Getting a floppy drive for my C64 so I didn't have to wait ages for the tape player. I hereby predict this will be the least exciting decade for storage, except the ones that follow it.

Re:There is one last revolution for storage

[Tailhook]

HP is marketing these ideas as "The Machine." The basic concept is using Re-RAM (ions) for all storage, fiber optics (photons) for all communications and electronics (electrons) for all processing. Ions, photons and electrons in a flattened crossbar matrix. Look up Martin Fink's recent presentations if you need a Buck Rogers fix.

The incredibly small, simple and easy to fabricate cell structure that Re-RAM seems to offer is just too compelling to ignore. Crossbar (the company) appears to be solving the Re-RAM problem. All we're trying to do is move ions around with current. There is a long list of possible materials and designs yet to be investigated. Eventually a sweet spot will be found. When that happens non-volatile storage density and speed will leap forward an order of magnitude, and the whole storage stack from the CPU cache to the tape drive will get flatter.

Or not. It's not like we need this to make the future exciting. Humanoid robots alone will provide more than enough excitement for the rest of my life.