Developments in Magnetic Digital Storage and Memory
Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates and recent IEEE President will talk on the history and developments of hard disk drives and magnetic tape.
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Tuesday
Feb 10, 2026
6:30–8:00 PM PT
Hybrid Meeting
Online or at Quadrant
San Jose, CA |
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AI workloads are increasing the demand for all types of digital storage and memory technology. As a consequence, demand exceeds supply and prices for all these products have significantly increased. It is possible that the availability of memory and storage technologies such as DRAM, HDDs and SSDs will provide a barrier to data center expansion for the next few years.
In this talk I will explore the history and developments of hard disk drives and magnetic tape with comments on competitive storage technologies including SSDs, optical storage and DNA storage and what we can expect in the future for these technologies. I will also discuss the likely growth of shipping storage capacity and expectations for HDD and SSD per capacity prices in the future.
I will also talk about the growing use of non-volatile memories, particularly magnetic random-access memory, MRAM and RRAM, and how these technologies are becoming a dominant memory technology for embedded applications in consumer, data center and industrial applications. Combined with evolving standalone memory applications these technologies are displacing NOR flash, SRAM and eventually could supplement DRAM
Agenda:
| 6:30 – 7:00 | Socializing and Networking at Quadrant |
| 6:55 | Zoom session will be online with Waiting Room |
| 7:00 – 7:45 | Lecture begins, online and in person |
| 7:45 – 8:00 | Questions and Answers |
Speaker:
Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates is a digital storage analyst and business/ technology consultant. He has over 40 years in the data storage industry with engineering and senior management positions. Coughlin Associates consults, publishes books and market and technology reports and puts on digital storage and memory-oriented events. He is a regular contributor to Forbes and to media and entertainment industry websites. He is an IEEE Fellow, 2024 IEEE President, Past-President IEEE-USA, Past Director IEEE Region 6 and Past Chair Santa Clara Valley IEEE Section and is also active with SNIA and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.