Category Archives: Strategic Inflection Points

Disk density hits new record, 1Tb/sqin with HAMR

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Ray

Well I thought 36TB on my Mac was going to be enough.  Then along comes Seagate with this weeks announcement of reaching 1Tb/sqin (1 Trillion bits per square inch) using their new HAMR (heat assisted magnetic recording) technology. Current LFF drive … Continue reading →

Posted in Disk storage, Storage density, Strategic Inflection Points | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NSA’s huge (YBs) new data center to turn on in 2013

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Ray

  Ran across a story in Wired about the new NSA Utah data center today which is scheduled to be operational in September of 2013. This new data center is intended to house copies of all communications intercepted the NSA. … Continue reading →

Posted in Data index, data protection, Data security, Distributed computing, Information economy, Storage density, Strategic Inflection Points, System effectiveness | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What to do with 36TB on my Mac?

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Ray

Western Digital (WD) just released their new Digital MyBook Thunderbold Duo the other day and it features 2-2TB or -3TB disks and of course you can daisy chain up to 6 of these together just in case, for up to 36TB … Continue reading →

Posted in Data density, Disk storage, File Storage, Strategic Inflection Points | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Archeology meets Big Data

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Ray

Read an article yesterday about the use of LIDAR (light detection and ranging, Wikipedia) to map the residues of an pre-columbian civilization in Central America, the little know Purepecha empire, peers of the Aztecs. The original study (seeLIDAR at Angamuco) … Continue reading →

Posted in Data analytics, Data growth, Data reduction, Distributed computing, Information economy, Strategic Inflection Points | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mobile health (mHealth) takes off in Kenya

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Ray

Read an article today about startups and others in Kenya  providing electronic medical care via mHealth and improving the country’s health care system (see Kenya’s Startup Boom). It seems that four interns were able to create a smartphone and web … Continue reading →

Posted in Cloud services, Distributed computing, Information economy, Market dynamics, Strategic Inflection Points, Systems, Visionary leadershp | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Magnetic storage using lasers alone

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Ray

Read an article today on AAAS Science Now online magazine (See Hot Idea for a Faster Hard Drive) on using lasers alone to toggle magnetic moments in specially designed ferro-magnetic materials. The disk industry has been experimenting with bit patterned … Continue reading →

Posted in Disk storage, Energy efficiency, Storage, Storage performance, Strategic Inflection Points, System effectiveness | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Why EMC is doing Project Lightening and Thunder

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Ray

Although technically Project Lightening and Thunder represent some interesting offshoots of EMC software, hardware and system prowess,  I wonder why they would decide to go after this particular market space. There are plenty of alternative offerings in the PCIe NAND … Continue reading →

Posted in Data efficiency, Distributed computing, Market dynamics, Scenario planning, SSD storage, Storage performance, Strategic Inflection Points, Strategic planning, System effectiveness, Visionary leadershp | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Intel acquires InfiniBand fabric technology from Qlogic

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Ray

Intel announced today that they are going to acquire the InfiniBand (IB) fabric technology business from Qlogic. From many analyst’s perspective, IB is one of the only technologies out there that can efficiently interconnect a cluster of commodity servers into … Continue reading →

Posted in Clustered storage, Distributed computing, Ethernet, Infiniband, Information economy, Networking, RDMA, RoCE, Storage performance, Strategic Inflection Points | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment