The digital universe is already huge, and growing exponentially. Occupying some 4.4 ZB in 2013, predictions state that will increase by a factor of ten by 2020, to an almost inconceivable 44 ZB. With so much data being generated, accelerating at a near untenable rate and fueled by IoT and its sub-derivatives, where do we store it all? And it’s not just our own data gathering increases we need to worry about. By 2017, emerging markets will overtake what we consider mature markets in their proportional occupation of the digital universe. By 2020, they are predicted to account for 70 percent of it, with China alone occupying 20 percent.

Even three years ago, the global available storage capacity could hold a mere third of this generated data. By 2020, it will be able to store less than 15 percent. The mass migration from HDD to SSD technology has given us all lightning access speeds and increased operating performance substantially, but it’s been a backwards step in terms of capacity. Multibillion-dollar investments in new manufacturing are required to bridge that gap to meet our storage capacity needs.

Microsemi believes the solutions lie in centrally managed cloud services, employing high-density and low power equipment. With mass deployment of NVMe SSD technology and more efficient real-time filtering and analytics, such preprocessing slashes the amount of data that actually needs storing. Microsemi presents end-to-end IC solutions for the looming catastrophe of the globe running out of storage.

Microsemi will be exhibiting at electronica 2016 in Munich November 8-11th.