3TB memory cards – the shape of things to come ?

Journalists always get sent stuff. Every day, sometimes several times a day, you will get the bing bong from your local courier service as they drop off another package. Most of the time, it's kit for testing. Sometimes it's a promotional product. We were going to consign the latest 1GB Western Digital memory stick to ‘the pile', when it gave us a little inspiration. KitGuru thinks back to a simpler time, and projects forward with all seeing vision. Nice.

When the PC came into existence, it was supplied with 16 to 256kb of memory. The PC XT (eXtended Technology) offered 128KB to 640KB. By the time the IBM PC AT launched in 1984, the memory offered had grown to between 256KB and 16MB. Around the same time, scientists were investigating the possibility of memory devices in the 1GB range. Lots of research was devoted to organic memory being targeted with huge lasers. Not quite the thing you need in a hand-held camera.

Twenty years after the scientific community started serious investigation into what would be needed for a 1GB memory product, the world's first 1GB SD memory card launched. So the move from 1MB modules to 1GB products was in the ‘somewhat less than 2 decades' range.

If production advances continue at the same kind of rate going forward, we could expect the first 1TB memory card in the KitGuru Labs in about 8 years' time. The move from 1 to 2 to 3TB etc would then happen very quickly.

So while this Western Digital 1GB card was supplied as a way of promoting its new 3TB hard drive – it might actually be a strong indicator of the shape of things to come in the memory market place.

A world where ‘desktop' storage is measured in PetaBytes, memory cards are in the TeraByte range and internet access in the home is a symmetrical 100Gb/sec package for less than £49/$49/€49 a month.

KitGuru says: This ‘future' sounds like a good place to live – we're thinking of moving there soon.

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