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From: dick@cca.ucsf.edu (Dick Karpinski)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Non-Discoid Very Large Mass Storage Systems
Summary: Digital paper and juke boxes look nice...
Message-ID: <2877@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu>
Date: 10 May 90 01:45:51 GMT
References: <29543@cup.portal.com>
Organization: Computer Center, UCSF
Lines: 46


In article <29543@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
>I'd like to know what technologies are competing with magnetic and optical
>disk drives at the high end of the mass storage spectrum (high in terms
>of capacity rather than speed).

I've been looking at various juke boxes and the new "digital paper"
devices.  Near as I can tell, whether rewritable or WORM, juke boxes
of optical disks run about $1/megabyte and cost about $35k to get
started in the game.  That cost/meg can be reduced to about 40 cents
if you go for humongous capacity and pay the $300k entry cost.  By
way of contrast, hard disks can be had for $3/meg and do not suffer
the 10 second or so access time.

Exabyte 2GB tapes can be had in juke box configuration with about
the same entry cost as the low end optical disk jukes giving the
cost/meg of the high end ones.

The new digital paper stuff seems to arrive first (about now) in
terabyte capacity and $200k+ pricing for mainframe channels.  One
open reel of 35 mm paper (800 meters or so) gives 28 second average
access time and 60 second end to end time.  Even though the medium
only costs $0.01 per megabyte, that comes to $10k for the reel.

More interesting to me is the 3480 cartridge tape lookalike system
expected to be introduced in about a year.  It is expected to lower
the entry cost by an order of magnitude and handle a mere 50 GB.
An inexpensive 10 cartridge changer brings you back to 0.5 TB.

The other nice entry level product is expected maybe in 1992 as a
fancy flippy-floppy with about 500 meg/side.  It'll have to compete
with ever cheaper rewritable optical drives and platters.  Here the
expected media cost of $10-20 beats current optical platters, but
then products you can't buy are often cheaper.

When last I tried to show the relevant statistics, I discovered 
that I am vitally interested in access time, transfer rate, capacity,
cubic feet per gig, footprint per gig, entry cost, media cost, 
reliability, etc etc.  Many too many things to show at once.

Dick
-- 
Dick Karpinski  Manager of Unix Services, UCSF Computer Center
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