All About Cloud Data Storage
In 2014, Seagate announced a new hard drive Kinetic HDD with an Ethernet interface whose performance is several times higher than the performance of all existing at the time the company's products. The new invention simplifies the process of creating a software and hardware storage architectures, reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) and allowing to respond quickly to the growing needs of cloud storage infrastructure systems. |
Cloud Data Storage |
Hot Topic : Technologies Used in Cloud Computing
Another Seagate Development, the essence of which is tiled recording technology (shingled magnetic recording, SMR), formed the basis of more than four million drives, which have been put on the market in the two years since its launch in production. SMR technology feature is that when recording information on a disk track overlap.This increases the number of tracks on each plate and shorten the distance between them, which in turn increases the storage capacity by 25%. The problem of low recording speed is achieved in this case by means of special microprograms, that optimize the sequential write operation.
All this leads us to believe that the hard drive will remain with us for a long time, as it, though not devoid of shortcomings, but time-tested technology, which to this day continues to improve. However, sooner or later, a new way of storing data appears in the world, which is in all respects surpass the magnetic disk drives. Let's make a small excursion into the future and take a look at promising developments in the field of data storage.
Cloud Data Storage - Storage Based on DNA
One of the most promising and promising technologies of the future are the store on the basis of DNA. On it we wrote in one of our previous posts. The DNA molecule offers incredible recording density. DNA disk the size of a teaspoon can fit all of the data existing in the world - every song, every book, every movie.Another advantage of DNA storage is their durability. In the words of Harvard scientist George Church (George Church), DNA-drive can be left anywhere, even in the desert, but the data will remain on it even 400,000 years later.
To check how long data can be stored in the DNA, the researchers coded the 83 Kbytes of data, namely two documents - the Federal Charter of 1291 and the Archimedes Palimpsest. The selection of these documents, according to them, shows not only the potential applicability of the method, but also its historical importance. According to the resource, New Scientist, the cost of the experiment amounted to $ 1,500. According to representatives of ETH Zurich, if the DNA is subjected to freezing, the data will remain unchanged for millions of years.
At this stage, the main obstacles to the introduction of new mass data storage technology is the time spent on data retrieval. Even using advanced decoding technology to read DNA molecule takes many hours - several orders of magnitude longer than reading a regular file on the computer. Because this type of storage is not suitable for frequently accessed data. Moreover, scientists still information are entered into the artificial DNA, and only then it is placed into a bacterium.
Of course, at the current level of development of technologies of DNA synthesis it is a very expensive process, but its application prospects for long-term storage of important information obvious.
Also worth noting one of the adjacent development, which allows you to store data in a so-called "soft matter". The term "soft matter" can refer to liquids, polymers and biomaterials even. According to new research, microscopic particles in a liquid can be used to encode the same zeros and ones, just like the modern hard drives. In theory, clusters of such particles one can store up to 1 TB of data in a tablespoon of liquid.
Cloud Data Storage - "Atomic" Data Collector
"What if we could arrange the atoms in random order"? Said the famous American physicist Richard Feynman during his lecture "Down there, still a lot of space" in 1959. Scientists have suggested that the "arm" of the appropriate size will allow to move individual atoms. This would mean that the information, such as text that can be written with the help of the atoms themselves, and then the whole encyclopedia "Britannica" would fit on the tip of a pin. Thus, Feynman laid the foundations of the future of nanotechnology.Three decades later, a group of scientists from IBM's managed to do that, Feynman described. With tunneling microscope, they have put the company logo of 35 xenon atoms on a nickel surface, for the first time demonstrated the ability to move individual atoms.
To prevent displacement of the atoms and keep them in their places, the researchers had to reduce the temperature to -269ºC, which is only 4ºC above absolute zero. The experiment proved so costly that write more than three letters, there was no point.
In July 2016 a team of scientists from Delft University of Technology, located in the Netherlands, made a new breakthrough in the field of storage of data at the atomic level. Instead of three letters, they were able to write a paragraph of text (approximately 1 kilobyte of data).
The main disadvantage of the new method is the high demands on environmental conditions. Atoms not shifted to arbitrarily drive is necessary to cool to the temperature of liquid nitrogen (minus 196 degrees Celsius). However, this method is much cheaper than liquid helium cooling applied at the time IBM.
Unlike the IBM research company, Dutch scientists have kept the information is not in letters, and in a binary code. The essence of the technique is to place the chlorine atoms on the copper plate, where they naturally form a grid with square openings. Alternating atoms with empty spaces between them, as well as moving the atoms on a plate on the empty space, scientists receive a "pattern" that can be read - just read a QR-code.
"Imagine tag. Each bit consists of two positions on the surface of the copper atoms and atoms of chlorine, that we can move between these positions. If the chlorine is located at the top position, and the "hole" underneath it means one. Reverse position zero, said the project manager Otte Sander. Chlorine atoms are located sufficiently tight, thus achieving greater stability encoded data than the IBM experiment.
Grille was so stable that scientists have been able to build 1 016 atoms on a plot size of 96 to 126 nanometers (for comparison, the human immunodeficiency virus takes 120 nm). Such a density information storage allows to fit 78 trillion bits per square centimeter - is hundreds of times faster than current hard disks.
Such a high density will eventually expand the memory capacity of phones, computers, and data centers. But before scientists need to adapt the technology for use at room temperature. In addition, the rewrite speed yet low - only 64 bits for 1-2 minutes. Dr. Otte says that could increase to one million bits per second, but it is still a thousand times slower than today's HDD.
Whatever it was, the idea of creating such a drive is very promising, if we develop it in the right direction. It is noteworthy that on its nuclear drive Dr. Otte decided to record the first 160 words of the famous lecture Freynmana. It turns out he was right: we really can have atoms as we please.
Cloud Data Storage - Quantum Data Warehouse
Quantum encryption has long been regarded as the prospect of the development of super-fast computers, which are based on qubits (quantum bit), rather than the traditional binary data. The fact is, by its nature information capacity qubit higher than usual bits of binary logic, but the greatest interest here is not even the density of data storage, and their welfare.Researchers at the German Institute for Quantum Optics at the Max Planck presented its new development, which claims to be the quantum memory store of the future. For the first time they managed to save the state of a quantum bit in the artificial diamond crystal at room temperature longer than one second. This discovery allows us to overcome the main obstacles to the creation of super-fast quantum computers.
Note that the previous record store quantum information at room temperature was only a few milliseconds. Upon reaching extremely low temperatures, this figure can be increased significantly, but such an approach is impractical in the case of need for a computing device for ordinary users.
The role of the qubit in the "diamond" of memory carries a carbon atom, or more precisely the carbon atoms of the isotope C13. Isotope kernel has the so-called nuclear spin, generating a magnetic moment by which it acts as a magnet, oriented parallel to the (then the value of the qubit is equal to the conventional "unit") or perpendicular (if the value is conditional "zero") the magnetic field applied from the outside.
Due to the effect of quantum superposition of the core can be in two states at the same time - "parallel" and "perpendicular", which allows you to record in a set of qubits more information than in the classic binary register.
However, all operations for the exchange of information with such qubits occur indirectly, through the so-called nitrogen-vacancy center, which, in fact, is the main invention of researchers, which allowed to extend the lifetime of the qubit to one second.
According to the statements of researchers, in future quantum data storage systems can provide as much as possible protected against forgery and fraud authentication means (passports, identity cards) and secure payments (credit cards). After all, if the information is recorded in a quantum state, then it can not be properly considered without knowing the original recording parameters (e.g, the direction of polarization of the light).
Any attempt to find out the state of a quantum system changes it, and cloning blindly fundamentally impossible. For these reasons, the popular attack method of search in relation to quantum systems useless.
While we should not jump to conclusions and say that some of these technologies will be able to enter the market. However, these developments will contribute to the development of accurate storage. In the meantime, we have to keep an eye on technological advances and store data on hard drives. According to forecasts of the international consortium ASTC (Advanced Storage Technology Consortium), HDD capacity will grow to 100 terabytes by 2025. It seems that on this for a while is enough.
