German company Cerabyte developed Ceramic-based storage technology capable of writing 100PB to a single cartridge and 1EB to a ceramic-coated tape drive. The company will present details of the new ceramic nano storage technology at the end of September.
Image source: Cerabyte
The new technology represents a way to store information based on inorganic nanosheets using ceramic particles 50-100 atoms thick. Data can be written and read with a laser or particle beam, structuring information similar to QR codes.
Cerabytes indicate the storage volume density “mainly depends on the thickness of the substrate”These can be glass plates with a thickness of 100–300 µm or 5 µm thick ribbons with a 10 nm thick coating. Information on such media is protected from most standard data media threats: fire, flood, and electrical discharge.
The technology reduces the particle size from 100nm to 3nm, which roughly corresponds to a recording density in the order of GB/cm2 up to TB/cm2. The data is recorded and read out using high-resolution optical microscopy or electron beam microscopy (for structures below the optical diffraction limit). In addition, a very advanced robotic component will be required.
Cerabyte claims that the new technology will be available as early as 2025-2030. will increase storage density with CeraMemory cartridges from 10 to 100 PB per rack in 2030-2035. 1 EB CeraTape tapes are planned. Data access delay is measured in seconds.
Cerabyte officials claim that ceramic nanomemory offers GB/s-level data writing and reading speeds, while 2 million bits of information can be written in one laser pulse. According to the company, particle stream recording on tape can reach a volume density of terabytes/mm³, which is an order of magnitude higher than any storage solution commercially available today.
Cerabyte said the media is fully recyclable, has low power consumption when writing and reading, and has a long lifespan, giving the new technology great sustainability benefits. The cost structure for implementing a new storage technology is expected to be lower than the total cost of current commercial storage technologies.
Experts point out that the mass density of the data is increasing “mainly depends on the thickness of the substrate”Then Cerabyte devices have to be extremely complex to write and read data at the right depth and in the right place on the medium. This can be a serious obstacle to the commercial success of the new technology. Until now, it was the complexity of this development that put an end to the ideas of holographic information storage.
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