IBM and Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. announced the new technology Tuesday. Although they would not say when it might be available in products, the vendors did demonstrate a 1TB cartridge in 2002 that is expected to be available next year, according to Bruce Master, IBM's senior program manager for worldwide tape systems marketing.
If the new tape technology has a similar time-to-market projection, that would make it available in 2011.
Moreover, since IBM is one of the partners in the Linear Tape-Open organization, an industry group that develops standard cartridges and drives, "I think you could expect to see technology like this in an LTO specification," Master said. The specification, which typically doubles capacity every version and refreshes every two years, is currently defined at 400GB Version 6, which would be expected to come out in 2010 -- meaning that the LTO specification coming out in 2012 would use the new technology. "You could project that, based on history," Master said.
The point of the demo is to reassure users that tape has a long life ahead of it and that it continues to be a good investment, Master said. In addition to being an order of magnitude cheaper than disk -- according to a Data Mobility Group LLC study -- it allows users not to put all their eggs in one basket, and it is removable and storable for disaster recovery, he said.
For its part, FujiFilm -- also a member of the LTO organization -- is developing a new tape medium based on barium ferrite rather than the iron oxide used in today's tapes. While iron oxide particles are needle-shaped and from 50 to 100 nanometers in size, barium ferrite particles are hexagonal -- meaning they fit together more tightly -- and have a diameter of 20nm, said Jake Ozawa, manager of the technical division, recording media, at FujiFilm's research headquarters in Valhalla, N.Y.
In addition to having a smaller recording density, barium ferrite has a higher signal-to-noise ratio and resolution. The barium acts as a protective coating on the ferrite, making it more stable than iron oxide, Ozawa said.
Tapes using the new technology will cost about the same as tapes today, meaning the cost per gigabyte will go down, Ozawa said.
The new technology, which uses the same form factor as LTO tape cartridges today, works by using improved heads and servos that can read the smaller particles, Master said.
"IBM has, back to the 1950s, been the champion of tape and has really many of the very significant tape technologies," said Robert Abraham, an analyst at Freeman Reports, an Ojai, Calif.-based firm that follows the data storage industry. "This is one more step -- but it's a big step."
Although the full technology might not be available for five years, users will likely see benefits from the developments within a year or two, Abraham said.
As an example of how the industry has progressed, "10 years ago, 10 gigabytes on a tape was a huge deal," Master said. With the new technology, IBM's TS3500 library -- which can hold up to 6,000 cartridges -- would be able to store 48 petabytes, he said.