Trends in the price and performance of several storage technologies are presented with emphasis on magnetic recording and semiconductor memories. Since these technologies present a moving target, new contenders cannot enter the marketplace unless they provide a significant advantage over the entrenched competition. It is concluded that in the next decade, optical storage of digital data can make an impact at the high capacity end—trillion bits and above—provided prices are at least an order of magnitude lower and access at least an order of magnitude faster than in present day systems.

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