A record 152.9 exabytes of total compressed tape capacity shipped in the fourth quarter of 2023, an increase of 3.14 percent over 2022.
The figures were released by the LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), a group comprising of HPE, IBM, and Quantum. LTO stands for the Linear Tape-Open Ultrium format, an open tape format developed by the three companies in the 1990s.
In the report, the growth was attributed to increased data generation and storage requirements in the face of rapid AI developments, in addition to the low TCO and sustainable nature of the technology.
The latest LTO offering, dubbed generation 9, provides 45TB of compressed tape capacity, which represents a 50 percent capacity increase over LTO-8 and a 1,400 percent increase over LTO-5. Generation 9 also has transfer speeds of up to 400 MBps (native) and 1,000 MBps (compressed), in addition to full backward read and write compatibility, hardware-based encryption, Write-Once, Read-Many functionality, and fast data access with the Linear Tape File System.
The report also noted that demand for higher storage capacities showed the TPCs needed to commit to further evolving and improving LTO tape technology, with the group’s extended LTO program roadmap setting a goal of achieving 1.4PB of compressed capacity per cartridge by LTO generation 14.
“LTO tape technology continues to realize annual gains. LTO tape utilization is poised to expand even further as customers increasingly require higher storage capacity and recognize the benefits of the technology,” said G. Kyle Fitze, VP, OEM & partner enabled products, HPE Storage. “We remain dedicated to improving and innovating further around LTO tape technology for the fast-evolving needs of organizations now and in the years to come.”
Earlier this month, Peter Zhou, president of the data storage product line at Huawei said the company was developing a storage solution that could potentially allow companies to move away from using tape-based storage.
Speaking at Huawei’s annual Innovative Data Infrastructure forum in Berlin, Zhou said tape storage is a “terrible technology” as it is inefficient and presents a number of challenges as it needs to be stored in temperature and humidity-controlled spaces.
“When I talk to data center engineers, they all hate it,” he said.
