Data storage in 2000-trends in data storage technologies

Recent projections by experts in computer systems and semiconductor technology indicate that in the year 2000, personal computers will have a processing speed of 100 million instructions per second and a semiconductor RAM capacity of 1 Gbyte. To work with such a system, data storage devices will need to provide more than 10 Gbytes of capacity and a data rate of 100 Mbyte/s. The advances required by magnetic and magnetooptical disk drives to meet these requirements are examined. Plausible system configurations for achieving these goals are described. A magnetic disk drive utilizing eight 3.5-in. disks on one spindle appears to be a possible configuration. Because of a larger areal density, a magnetooptical disk drive could meet the capacity requirements with only a single 3.5-in. disk. On the other hand, achieving the 100-Mbyte/s data rate and access times comparable to those of magnetic disk systems will require some technological breakthroughs. Without these breakthroughs and assuming magnetic disk progress as expected, magnetooptical disks are expected to provide many of the functions which floppy disks provide today-transfer of programs and databases between systems and economical offline storage