[clug] Feedback requested... Timeline of significant events in disk and storage

[steve jenkin]

Draft Timeline:
<http://stevej-lab-notes.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/disk-storage-timeline.html>

I’ve written a first draft of what I consider to be significant events in the world of Storage, which until not long ago would’ve been solely hard disk drives.
I’ve left out the many iterations of hardware development, and things like floppies [or dead-ends like Bubble memory]

Included are a couple of CD-ROM filesystem standards, but not the release of any Optical Disk or WORM drive technologies.

Flash Memory is one of the most important new hardware technology in a very long time, possibly 1956. It's crept up on us over the last 15+ years (starting with Compact Flash cards for cameras), first more expensive than DRAM, now 1/10, or better, their price.

EEPROM has been around for a very long time, but Flash + NAND have proven special.
We’ve seen SLC morph into the more challenging MLC.
Flash has gone below 10 electrons-per-bit/cell, creating real problems with resilience and data loss/errors. Not sure if that will slow or stop product development, as physical limits have already for CPU’s, DRAM and magnetic disks.

We’re on the verge of 3-D flash plus a number of non-flash ‘Storage Class Memories” (SCM), which may have very different failure and fault modes - making them unsuitable for everyday use, or not.

I’ve deliberately left out the single-core CPU “heat limit” (`2003/4, see Herb Sutter), the DRAM scaling problems (2005) an

If people on this list have any feedback, I’d appreciate it.

 I’m looking for:

 - corrections of any kind (facts, grammar, spelling, pertinent missing details or correct versions and day/month/year),
 - stuff I’m quite wrong about, especially dates. I’m trying for +/- 1/2 year in accuracy because a lot events don’t have precise dates, they’re ‘fuzzy’.
 - events I should be adding, and
 - suggestions for deletions. It’s my interpretation of ‘significant’ but happy to listen to others’ views

cheers
steve
--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin