IBM Research scientists have achieved 201 Gb/in2 (gigabits per square inch) record in areal density on a prototype sputtered magnetic tape developed by Sony Storage Media Solutions.
IBM said the areal recording density is more than 20 times the areal density used in current state of the art commercial tape drives such as the IBM TS1155 enterprise tape drive.
The IBM innovation also enables the potential to record up to about 330 terabytes (TB) of uncompressed data on a single tape cartridge that would fit in the palm of your hand.
330 terabytes of data are comparable to the text of 330 million books, which would fill a bookshelf that stretches slightly beyond the northeastern to the southwestern most tips of Japan, said IBM scientists, who presented the achievement at the 28th Magnetic Recording Conference (TMRC 2017).
Tape storage is currently the most secure, energy efficient and cost-effective solution for storing enormous amounts of back-up and archival data, as well as for new applications such as Big Data and cloud computing.
With this achievement, IBM scientists demonstrate the viability of continuing to scale the tape roadmap for another decade.
Tape has traditionally been used for video archives, back-up files, replicas for disaster recovery and retention of information on premise, but the industry is also expanding to off-premise applications in the cloud.
“While sputtered tape is expected to cost a little more to manufacture than current commercial tape that uses Barium ferrite (BaFe), the potential for very high capacity will make the cost per TB very attractive, making this technology practical for cold storage in the cloud,” said IBM Fellow Evangelos Eleftheriou.
To achieve 201 billion bits per square inch, IBM researchers developed several new technologies, including:
Signal-processing algorithms for the data channel, based on noise-predictive detection principles, which enable reliable operation at a linear density of 818,000 bits per inch with an ultra-narrow 48nm wide tunneling magneto-resistive (TMR) reader.
A set of advanced servo control technologies that when combined enable head positioning with an accuracy of better than 7 nanometers. This combined with a 48nm wide (TMR) hard disk drive read head enables a track density of 246,200 tracks per inch, a 13-fold increase over a TS1155 drive.
