The Universe… On A Stick?
Over the last decade and a half, portable memory chips have become commonplace, at first primarily as a way of storing video or pictures on cameras, but eventually the memory technology reached a high enough density and was being produced in large enough quantities that we started to see cross-over technologies such as flash memory sticks that combine USB, micro-controller and flash memory technologies.
Memory read/write speeds along with data transfer rates on USB devices have continued to improve over the years until it has become possible to store full-length movies on the memory stick and actually play them directly from the device.
The iPod Touch and iPhone use flash technologies to replace miniaturized hard drives thus reducing power consumption. In general, an iPod Touch is a very sophisticated memory stick capable (currently) of storing 32 gigabytes of movies, pictures, applications not to mention the operating system the device uses to function.
Truly, flash memory technologies are reaching remarkable densities and performance levels. However this is merely the beginning of the trend.
In the July/September issue of the IBM Journal of Research and Development, several research papers were published discussing a class of memory technologies called Storage Class Memory or (SCM)1. The development of SCM technologies is an effort by companies like IBM to completely replace the hard disk drive by the year 2020. While, there are many challenges to overcome, mainly related to device longevity, the papers were very optimistic at the prospects of overcoming them. I believe that by 2010 we will start to see the first SCM devices appear which will most likely be used to replace flash technologies in the 1-40 gigabyte ranges. However, by 2015 we should start to see 50-150 gigabyte SCM devices start to appear and the first of the laptops making use of them.
Essentially, when we can finally utilize SCM devices in traditional computers such as laptops, desktops and servers, we will have finally broken away from the largest bottleneck to computing performance that currently exists: the Hard Drive. We will finally realize the first “Instant-On” computers and perceived application performance will skyrocket without any other changes to the computing architectures.
At the same time, as SCM devices start to mature, you will start to see SCM Memory Sticks with capacities of 30 to 50 gigabytes and mean-time-before-failure rates in the tens of years. It is quite possible that by 2020 we could see 1+ Terabyte laptop computers and 500 gigabyte memory sticks (can you imagine a 500+ gigabyte iPod?).
About fifteen years ago, I was fascinated by a Sci-Fi television show called Babylon 5, and while there were many futuristic technologies that seemed to be ubiquitous, none more so then the Memory Crystal (for lack of a better term). These things seemed to have the ability to store vast quantities of data and have the ability to access any portion of it almost instantaneously. I believe we are on the road toward making this technology a reality. While “Blue-Ray” DVD’s are the first truly cheap digital recording medium capable of storing a full-length high-definition movie without compression, I believe that by 2015 some entrepreneurial inventor will marry USB 3.0, SCM and some hardware security technologies make SCM Memory Sticks a reality. This literally could be the end of mechanical recording devices like CD’s or DVD’s as literally you could rent several HD movies by paying a small fee for the use of a special memory stick at the movie rental store (which has proprietary security hardwired to prevent copying or tampering2, and also a timer to render the stick inert when the rental time runs out). Imagine taking your rental stick to the movie rental kiosk, plug it in, choose 3 or so movies to rent, pay the kiosk and have them downloaded to your memory stick. At home, you could literally have the playback device be built into your television, or it could be a small HDMI connected play-box device that you insert your stick into.
To be honest, the previous example may not be the best one, considering that greater numbers of people are choosing to download their videos over the Internet or rent them “On Demand” through their cable company, but I think you get the idea.
Regardless, I find a world where there are no more CD’s, DVD’s, or floppy disks (do we even use those anymore?), a fantastic one. Wouldn’t it be great if the future could let us store the universe on a stick?
- See Storage-class memory: The next storage system technology by R. F. Freitas and W. W. Wilcke [↩]
- For example the IronKey has similar security features. [↩]
