IBM Prepares 100-Terabyte Tape Drives

By Roland Piquepaille

It's a well-known fact that we're living in an era of data explosion, and that's it not about to stop. So it's not really surprising that IBM researchers are eyeing 100T-byte tape drives. Yes, you read correctly. They want to increase the capacity storage of their largest units by 250 times, from 400 GB to 100 TB. In order to achieve this goal, they're borrowing "nanopatterning" techniques derived from the microprocessor division. Today, the size of a tape track is about 10 microns. They want to reduce it to 0.5 micron -- or 500 nanometers -- in about five years. IBM doesn't really say when a 100-Terabyte tape drive will be available. But more importantly, the company doesn't say a word about future data transfer rates, which today reach a 80 MB/s. Read below for more comments on this problem...

Here is the introduction of the article.

IBM has begun work on new technologies designed to boost the capacity of tape storage devices by 250 times. Using "nanopatterning" techniques derived from the company's microprocessor division, researchers say they expect to one day build cartridges that can store as much as 100T bytes of data.

To reach this goal, it's no longer enough to shrink the size of the magnetic tracks.

That's where the microprocessor techniques come in. The Almaden researchers are now exploring ways they can use chip techniques such as reactive ion etching (a very precise method for putting patterns on film) or sputter deposition (a method of applying film in a very well-controlled way) to increase the storage capacity of tape.

The ultimate goal is to shrink the size of those tape tracks so that more data can be squeezed onto the same area of tape. "The track size now is in the neighborhood of about 10 microns," said Spike Narayan, a senior manager with IBM Research. His group of ten researchers hopes to shrink that size down to about 0.5 micron, or 500 nanometers, within the next five years. "This will carry us all the way to the 100T byte regime," he said.

Essentially, IBM researchers plan to change the magnetic patterns on tape media from something that is large and uncontrolled to something much smaller and tightly controlled, Narayan said, meaning the tape of the future will have much smaller magnetic particles that are densely packed into rows, somewhat like dimples on a golf ball.

When will we see these tape devices?

Though Narayan was reluctant to predict when IBM might bring its first 100T byte tape devices to market, he said cartridges that can store a terabyte of data will hit the market within 18 months. The 3580 tapes can store 400G bytes of uncompressed data at present.

Now, it's time to look at the other story: data transfer rates.

Where were we 20 years ago? We had 9-track tapes containing 200 MB and able to transfer data at about 2 MB/s. In 20 years, capacity increased 2,000 times to 400 GB, while speed only increased 40 times, from 2 to 80 MB/s.

If history repeats itself, this means that if capacity increases by a factor of 250 in the coming years, transfer rates will increase by a more modest factor of 5, to reach a respectable 400 MB/s.

So let's do some simple math. Even if such a speed of 400 MB/s was sustainable, it would take 250,000 seconds to read or write 100 terabytes. In other words, it will take about 70 hours of 3 days.

Is this acceptable? I doubt. So if anyone has information about how data transfers will be handled with this next-generation of tape device, please post your comments below. Thanks.

Source: Robert McMillan, IDG News Service, December 17, 2004

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