Storage finds a home ... at home: the couch potato runs the show.

The storage industry as a whole is unlikely to see a surge like the late 90s, where growth was double-digit on the high end. But computer storage is in use in venues far beyond the data center and other enterprise locales. One of the most dynamic markets is the consumer sector, where growth in disk and optical storage is likely to surge 40-50% year over year. Flash memory, chip and hard-disk drive manufacturers, as well as storage system, consumer device manufacturers, and software companies gathered to discuss how to integrate digital storage into consumer products such as cell phones, MP3 players, home networking, and set-top boxes at the Storage Visions Conference held in Las Vegas, January 4-5, 2005. Storage Visions is a two-day conference connected with the huge Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and produced by analyst and consultant Tom Coughlin. Conference sessions ranged from storage in handheld devices to the use of storage in video and audio editing/postproduction applications.

The Newest Microdrive

At the conference, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced a smaller one-inch Microdrive product and a slimmer 1.8-inch hard drive to come later this year. These two miniature drives are designed to meet the accelerating demand for ultra-portable handheld devices (such as mobile phones and digital music players), which are requiring more and more storage capacity.

Hitachi will deliver on these requirements by re-engineering its one-inch Microdrive to create a 20% smaller version with capacity at 8-10 GBytes of storage. With a physical dimension of 40X30X5mm, it is designed for the smallest handheld devices with needs for ample, yet affordable, storage. In addition, through an integrated chipset, it will enable up to a 40% reduction in power consumption over the existing Microdrive product. The new smaller Microdrive is referred to as "Mikey".

"Mikey" is being tailored for the CE industry and will employ a new ZIF connector, which has been traditionally used by CE device manufacturers for ease of integration. Because the applications for which "Mikey" is intended are highly portable devices, Hitachi has provided for shock protection beyond the drive's internal mechanisms, which will offer more than a 100% operating-shock improvement over the current Microdrive product. Hitachi has also designed "snubbers," drive bumpers that could be mounted around "Mikey" to supply additional shock protection

Applying a similar approach to a new 1.8-inch Travelstar product, Hitachi will trim 30% off the thickness of the drive to create a 5mm version. nicknamed "Slim". With a slighter profile equivalent to that of the Microdrive, "Slim" will be the world's smallest and lightest 1.8-inch drive, beating the closest competitor by 10% in total volume.

"Mikey" is expected to debut in the second half of 2005 at 14 grams and in an embedded-only design. "Slim" is expected in the latter half of the year with 30-40GB of capacity on the one-disk version

CE-ATA

From a technology viewpoint, one of the most significant conference sessions at Storage Visions was the exploration of connectivity in Consumer Electronics. A diverse group of high-tech players explored a new standard interface for small form factor disk drives.

Known as the CE-ATA initiative, panelists from Intel Corp., Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Marvell Semiconductor Inc., Seagate Technology and Toshiba America Information Systems discussed the effort that will focus on storage used in handheld and consumer electronics products.

"Disk drive applications in handheld consumer electronics equipment is seeing explosive growth, yet the disk interface used for that application today is poorly suited for that purpose," said Knut Grimsrud, Intel senior principal engineer. "CE-ATA promises to deliver a storage interface tailored to the needs of small form factor disk drives in handheld applications used in fast growing consumer devices such as audio/video players and mobile phones."

The proposed CE-ATA (consumer electronics AT-attachment) standard addresses the interface requirements of small form-factor drives. The CE-ATA standard will consider important issues for mobile and handheld devices such as low pin count, small size, low voltage, power efficiency, and cost effectiveness. At the conference, CE-ATA members will outline the essence of the new technology and some of its fundamentals.

The current interface for small form factor is CF+, a 50-pin interconnect that features parallel ATA in a confined space. But parallel ATA has traditional limitations when it comes to integration; therefore a new model is necessary. There is some disagreement as to the place of SATA in the CE space.

Things That Spin

Significant by its absence at Storage Visions was the tape community. The conquest of the motion picture industry by DVD-R could not have been clearer. There was some discussion of future optical solutions at the conference, including the growing popularity of Blu-Ray optical implementations. There was also a revisit of holographic storage, where pioneer InPhase claims that the long-awaited technology is ready for prime time. The continued use of solid-state technology in handheld applications was demonstrated by Nelson Chan at SanDisk.

But the great majority of the conference examined a significant growth in the use of hard disk drives in consumer electronic applications and entertainment. Miniaturization, reduced power requirements, improved shock and vibration strategies are bringing the advantages of random access hard disk into the living room as well as the belt clip. Branded HDD is especially likely to enjoy sunlight as each individual creates a personal cultural database, including pictures, films, favorite musical selections and much, much more.

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Editor-in-chief Mark Ferelli