Future of storage and processing

Question

I was wondering if someone can help me with an assignment question. I need to "discuss the future implications of the exponential growth of storage and processing". I was wondering if anyone could email me at [e-mail] I have been on the internet for the last 4 hours trying to google and yahoo search info but nothing is coming up. Please, please, please help. Assignment due at end of week and teachers at my school wont help!

Answer 1

well I am not quite sure what you mean, but as far as a PC is concerned, the changes in a CPU which have evovled from single, to dual and now quad core, and how it processes information, one can only wonder where it goes from there? Storage as far as the PC is concerned the next evolution will be solid state drives (SSD), as a hard drive, which at the moment are only available to the military, and very expensive. We have smaller versions such as flash drives and digital camera memory card. When you talk say a 160 Gb SSD your talking approx. $1000 - $1500 in cost. once they evolve to the public the cost will come down. You are already seeing changes with the apple mac's and ipod, next G mobile phones, everything smaller and walkabout? Not sure if this will satisfy your teachers but keep researching, the answer is out there--oh sounds like an X-file?? Good luck

Answer 2

You'll probably be better off if you search on things like historical storage capacities, cpu bus speeds and die sizes.  Another answerer mentioned Solid State disks however their info about availability is way off, as you can purchase systems with solid state drives now.  Dell for example has solid state drives as an option on some systems.  The capacity currently leaves a bit to be desired and the cost isn't very affordable, but the speed, weight, form factor, etc. are all great (solid state drives have no moving parts, unlike traditional hard drives which are actually mechanical in nature).

I suspect what your teachers are looking for are a few anecdotal examples of the progression of storage capacities and processing power (e.g. the standard entry level PC these days has far more processing power and storage capacity than the systems that landed man on the moon, etc.), and predictions about future capabilities based on the historical trend.  I'd add in some potential negatives as well to balance your discussion, for example the growth in p****y, advertising and spam (i.e. faster processors and larger storage mean bigger and more complex files can be pirated, or bigger advertisements can be sent out, etc.).  Also the enormous amount of  junk data which tends to accumulate because people don't find it as necessary to delete old data.