Abstract

This presentation discusses the drivers for consumer digital storage, the different mobile and static usage models for digital storage in consumer devices and the resulting consumer storage hierarchy. Important characteristics of consumer storage devices are shown and guidelines are given for how digital storage should be designed in consumer devices. Demand for higher resolution content and for capturing ever greater details of the life of family members will drive increases in commercial as well as personal content storage demand. Sharing of content within a home or over the Internet creates much greater demand for storage since a shared file can be multiplied many times through network sharing. Implementation of a virtualized integrated storage utility into most homes with appropriate ease of use, suitable for consumers, will benefit customers by providing greater access to data as well as enhanced content protection using local as well as remote storage.

Speaker biography

Dr. Coughlin is the Founder and President of Coughlin Associates. Tom has over 30 years of experience in the data storage industry as a working engineer and high level technical manager. In addition to regular technical and management consulting projects he is the publisher of several reports including reports on digital storage in consumer electronics as well as content creation, archiving and distribution. He is the author of the recently published Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics: The Essential Guide from Newnes (a division of Elsevier). He has 6 patents on magnetic recording and related technologies. Tom is the founder and organizer of the annual Storage Visions Conference, a partner to the International CES. Tom is a senior member and was 2007 chairman of the Santa Clara Valley IEEE Section and San Francisco Bay Area Council and was chairman of the Santa Clara Valley IEEE Consumer Electronics Society in 2006 and past chairman of the SCV IEEE Magnetics Society more than once. Tom is a member of the IEEE CE Society Adcom. He is also a member of APS, AVS, IDEMA, SNIA, AAAS, TCG and SMPTE. Tom received a B.S. in Physics and an M.S.E.E. from the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Shinshu University in Nagano, Japan.