but I am an expert on Storage Systems (as the former Chief Architect for Seagate Technology). I can tell you that the watt cost per byte stored is dropping dramatically over the next few years. Drive manufacturers will produce (are producing) much large disk drives and flash storage units that store incredible amounts of data for the same watts (or even fewer watts) than current technology.
Seagate has announced (and is shipping) 14TB drives (Helium drives)... and they have announced a 60TB flash drive (3D flash technology) that uses only 3watts for read cycles and 6watts (max) for writes. These are both 3.5" SAS drives (standard form factor). Note, not flogging Seagate here... WD (Western Digital) is also working on similar technologies.
So while data requirements may explode as more things send data over the internet and video goes to higher definition, etc, the watts used to store that much information will likely remain constant or at least not grow exponentially.
Couple that with another driving factor... cold storage (either archived off to less power consuming technology OR simply powered down when not active) and hierarchical storage technology that moves data to these sorts of storage as predictive analysis says that the data won't be active...
So... at least for storage... increasing amounts of data will not consume corresponding increases in power. Going Green is now a major factor for large data center deployments (OPEX v. CAPX is now being dominated by OPEX requirements).
So... I simply do not believe such doomsday analysis... but only because we can address it technology.
= new reply since forum marked as read
