IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, has a long tradition of developing data storage technologies. According to Currie Munce, Almaden's director of storage systems and technology, though IBM is actively researching promising techniques such as holographic storage, magnetic hard disks will continue to be the storage medium of choice for the foreseeable future. This situation has much to do with economics, he explains. Magnetic hard disk technology is very mature and is supported by a broad infrastructure of suppliers and manufacturers. Hard disk drives also are inexpensive and ubiquitous, with more than 200 million units shipped annually.
New technologies face a number of hurdles when competing against magnetic hard disk drives.
Munce says it is difficult to amass the large amounts of research and development funding and create an infrastructure of suppliers for a new system, and a new device also must be inexpensive and operate at performance levels that are high enough to compete with hard disk drives. Magnetic storage development will continue at its current pace for at least three more years, Munce predicts. Technical issues revolving around the concentration of data storage will then begin to slow development to a pace comparable to that of the semiconductor industry, but the medium will advance rapidly for another five to seven years, he says. In that time, magnetic recording will reach capacities of at least 400 to 500 gigabits per square inch. At this density, a single 3.5-inch disk platter on a desktop computer's hard drive would possess something on the order of 500 to 750 gigabytes per platter.