Recent Research Activity Towards Future Data Storage

Abstract

Continued scaling of existing information storage paradigms appears to be near its end. A slowdown in the increase in areal storage density in magnetic hard disk drives, a system at the forefront of storage density, has been apparent in the last eighteen months and is likely to be seen in optical and solid state systems as well. However, this slowdown is a consequence of the engineering paradigm itself rather than any manifestation of fundamental physical limits on storage system performance. This paper suggests that storage densities orders of magnitude greater than those demonstrated today are possible.