- Ewigbyte combines optical learn/write items with automated dealing with for large-scale archival
- Knowledge is saved on inert media designed to withstand environmental degradation
- Modular structure permits scaling from petabytes to exabytes inside deployments
European startup Ewigbyte has unveiled an exabyte-scale, zero-power archival storage system, getting into the identical rising class as Cerabyte’s ceramic-based information storage know-how.
Every firm is pursuing long-term, energy-free information preservation aimed toward hyperscalers, governments, and analysis establishments dealing with fast archival development.
Ewigbyte relies on ultra-stable physical encoding to retain data for centuries without electricity, cooling, or periodic data migration.
Modular architecture and energy-free design
The system targets cold storage use cases where access latency matters less than durability, density, and lower operating costs.
By removing standby power and refresh cycles, the company says the platform can lower long-term archival expenses compared with magnetic tape and hard disk systems.
The startup built its architecture around modular storage units that scale from petabytes to exabytes within a single deployment.
Specialized hardware writes data onto inert media that resists heat, radiation, and environmental degradation.
Once written, the data stays fixed and requires no active management until retrieval.
Ewigbyte combines optical write and read units, robotic handling, and automated storage with software that integrates with object storage platforms.
Initial media designs target 10GB per tablet, with data written on both sides and local write and read speeds of about 500MB/s per head.
Through parallel operation, each machine reaches roughly 4GB/s, while overall throughput scales across multiple machines.
Planned facilities could run up to 100 machines at once, supporting exabyte-scale deployments.
Ewigbyte positions its system as an alternative to both tape libraries and emerging solid-state archival concepts.
Although access speeds lag conventional enterprise storage, the company argues that most archival datasets see rare access and instead require extreme durability, density, and minimal operating cost.
This focus makes the platform suitable for scientific records, cultural archives, satellite imagery, and long-term regulatory retention.
Cerabyte is pursuing an identical zero-power objective utilizing laser-etched ceramic storage, which displays rising curiosity in post-tape archival applied sciences.
Ewigbyte has not stated whether or not its media composition or write strategies overlap with ceramic-based designs, which limits direct technical comparability for now.
Different efforts on this area embrace Microsoft Challenge Silica, which makes use of laser-encoded quartz glass to retailer information for many years.
SPhotonics, by comparability, focuses on photonics-based multi-layer optical media for scalable chilly storage.
The broader problem for all of those programs lies in manufacturing scale, price per terabyte, and ecosystem adoption.
Archival storage patrons have a tendency to maneuver cautiously, and applied sciences that declare multi-century information retention typically face lengthy validation cycles.
Certification, standardization, and retrieval tooling will possible resolve which platforms achieve traction.
As information volumes proceed to outpace lively storage budgets, zero-power archival programs are shifting from analysis ideas towards early business deployment.
Whether or not Ewigbyte or Cerabyte reaches large-scale adoption first stays unclear, however their parallel efforts level to a potential shift away from tape-dominated archival infrastructure.
By way of Blocks & Files
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our professional information, evaluations, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure that to click on the Comply with button!
And naturally you can too follow TechRadar on TikTok for information, evaluations, unboxings in video kind, and get common updates from us on WhatsApp too.
