Trends in Storage Technologies

The high random and sequential I/O requirements of contemplated workloads could serve as impetus to move faster towards storage-class memory (SCM), a technology that will blur the distinction between memory and storage. On the other hand, the volume of digital data being produced is increasing at an ever accelerating pace. Recent technology demonstrations indicate that low-cost, low-power tape storage is well positioned to scale in the future and thus serve as archival medium. In this paper, we will look at the implications of these technology extremes, namely, SCM and tape, on the storage hierarchy.