Magnetic ribbons and cheap-as-chips flash team together
IBM researchers and Fujifilm have teamed together to release a tape prototype with a capacity of 580TB (or 0.58PB). That’s the equivalent of nearly six of the biggest SSDs in the world (the Nimbus Data 100TB) or 29 Seagate Exos+ 20TB hard disk drives. More importantly perhaps, it is more than 32x the current LTO-9 tape technology thanks to a record breaking areal density of 317Gbits per square inch. Fujifilm used Strontium Ferrite (SrFe) particles – and a number of techniques – to significantly boost the capacity of the tape; these include thinner tapes and longer tape lengths. While this is more of a research milestone reached with no commercial launch date set, a spokesperson for IBM confirmed that “There is a standardized roadmap that has to be followed and that will put this on the market in a little less than 10 years.
