710024Dataslide Proof-of-Concept DemonstratorClosedGRD Proof of ConceptInnovate UKThe total market for data storage is estimated to be over $30bn. It is forecast to continue growing at +10%pa, driven by increased use of video, the rapid growth of cloud computing, and the continued explosive growth in mobile devices. Hard disc drives are an established technology, and in consumer devices have achieved capacities of over 1000GB. However, in business data centres, where high integrity of data is a must, the standard module is 72GB in a 2½ inch package. The market for these modules alone is over $4bn, since they fail and need replacing regularly. These hard disc drives are close to their technical limit – they can’t spin much faster than the current 12,000 rpm, and they are always restricted to a single read-write head operating in serial mode. The first Dataslide product could readily be packaged to replicate the performance and functionality of these modules, with potentially higher reliability. And estimated energy use of the Dataslide device would be less than 25% of the equivalent hard disc drive. Western Digital, Seagate, Oracle and Cisco have all expressed interest in using Dataslide, once they can be convinced it can work Solid state (semiconductor) memory is increasingly used in mobile devices – mobile phones, tablet computers and high-end laptops. It’s not widely known outside the storage industry that solid state memory has a number of unsolved problems. The write speed is much slower than the read speed; individual cells can wear out after more than 10 write operations – not a big problem for consumer devices but a critical issue in high integrity applications; the software overhead of interfacing to solid state storage is a big problem for mobile phone manufacturers; and solid state storage also consumes considerable battery power. The Dataslide device could be packaged for mobile devices, and would potentially solve these problems. There are over 1bn mobile phones purchased annually – a growing proportion are smart phones with increasing internal memory. And the market for tablet computers is just taking off. Qualcomm, the originator and owner of the CDMA technology underlying today’s 3G phones, and the largest fab-less semiconductor company in the world, has expressed interest in using the Dataslide concept in its mobile device designs. And Samsung, the leading producer of solid state memory, has also expressed interest