Slashdot Mirror
IBM and Fuji Announce Tape Storage Breakthrough
robkill writes "IBM and Fuji have announced a breakthrough in the amount of data that can be stored on magnetic tape, a 15X improvement to 6.67 billion bits of data per square inch. IBM estimates that it will be 5 years before this hits the mass market"
Here's a better article.. They're claiming 8TB before compression on an LTO-sized tape. Tape record smashed with 8 terabyte format
You've clearly never worked in an enterprise-level environment. Larger companies like WalMart measure their storage requirements in petabytes. To these companies, the physical space required to store tape backups is significant, especially when you consider some records (such as employee records) have to be kept for up to 30 years after the employee leaves the company. Plus, virtually all accounting records must be kept for a large number of years by law.
FYI: Sony claimed 11 billion bits per square inch quite some time ago.
It's always good news when someone figures out how to store more bits into the same amount of space, and I'm sure that companies like IBM and Sony will keep pushing the limits.
If it's for tape, it depends on how long and wide it is. They give the denisty, so you can compute how much a particular tape size would hold... If it is about 6 Gbits per square inch, and is made into half inch tape that is ten feet long, then it'll be about 60 square inches, which is about 45 GBytes. If it is about 750 feet, which seems pretty realistic, then it'd be something like 3 TBytes per tape.
I've probably scrwed up the math, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Which is just as good, the sheer size obtainable using tape drives is just mind boggling.
On a side note, this article wasn't just light on details, it was shockingly devoid of all technical details as to how this was acheived. At least this article mentions the new density is acheived with a new tape medium coating.
Sheesh, the linked story might be interesting to stock-market droids, not slashdot readers.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
All you naysayers, understand that we had exactly the same sort of announcements before the Linear Tape Open (LTO) standard was developed. IBM led a group of manufacturers to develop a standard built around a few breakthroughs in tape density and drive head technologies. They predicted 10X (or more) capacity, 5X (or more) throughput, etc. and it would be available in 5 years or so. Sure enough, LTO-1 came about and immediately led to a tape storage boom. Quantum pushed DLT to about its limits, Storagetek upped the ante with their very high speed formats, etc. Everything got cheaper. Tape stayed relevant. I predict the very same trend in the near future...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom