Munich-based data storage company, Cerabyte, has revealed a pioneering data storage solution that leverages advanced ceramics to revolutionize the industry. Cerabyte’s CEO and co-founder, Christian Pflaum, is set to showcase this innovative technology at the upcoming 2023 Storage Developer Conference in California.
As the name suggests, Cerabyte’s approach involves using specially engineered ceramics, arranged in ultra-thin layers as slim as 50 atoms thick, creating sheets up to 300µm thick. The technology employs laser or particle beams to read and write data at remarkable speeds, with the media supporting areal densities of up to TB/cm^2.
To put this into perspective, current hard disk drives can only reach around 0.02TB/cm^2, with future models projected to achieve approximately 0.1TB/cm^2. Traditional tape storage, as seen in LTO cartridges, tops out at 0.006TB//cm^2 (or 317Gb/in^2).
Cerabyte plans to launch the first-generation racks featuring this innovative technology in 2025, with an initial capacity of 10PB (equivalent to 10,000TB). This capacity is expected to grow to 100PB by the end of the decade. Furthermore, Cerabyte has ambitions to introduce 1EB (one billion Gigabytes) CeraTape racks, designed as 5µm-thick ribbons coated with a 10nm thick ceramic layer.
While the accessibility of data remains in seconds, a key aspect of Cerabyte’s technology, read/write speeds continue to pose challenges. With a transfer speed of 1GB/s, filling a single rack would require over 110 days, making it suitable primarily for cold storage, lifetime cloud storage, and unlimited cloud storage scenarios.
Cerabyte intends to market its products primarily to hyperscalers, enterprises, and data center operators. The total addressable market for such technology is expected to soar to $500 billion by 2030, a six-fold increase compared to 2023. Cerabyte promises a substantial total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction of up to 75% thanks to its energy-efficient, high-density storage solution.
The inherent durability of ceramics makes them suitable for use under extreme conditions, including varying temperatures. Details regarding whether the product will include a separate drive or integrate the reading/writing mechanism with the media remain undisclosed.
Additionally, pricing specifics are yet to be revealed, but Cerabyte aims to offer a cost-effective solution. For reference, LTO-8 tapes currently cost around $4 per TB. If Cerabyte can match this pricing, its 10PB storage cartridge rack could be priced at approximately $40,000, an attractive option for informed consumers in need of high-density storage solutions.
