- Western Digital plans to supply 100TB+ HDDs inside a decade
- It’ll do that utilizing HAMR and HDMR warmth assisted applied sciences
- The corporate can also be investigating long-term storage, like ceramics and DNA
Western Digital and Sandisk have begun the method of splitting into separate companies, with the previous targeted on HDD and platform improvement, and the latter now all-in on flash merchandise. Each firms just lately held investor days, and whereas Sandisk teased a 1PB SSD and a flash substitute for HBM at its occasion, WD’s focus was on the way it intends to supercharge laborious drive capability inside a decade.
The corporate’s roadmap to the way forward for HDD know-how reveals a transparent development from energy-assisted Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (ePMR) to Warmth-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and in the end to Warmth Dot Magnetic Recording (HDMR), concentrating on over 100TB capacities.
By 2026, Western Digital says its HDD capability will attain 36TB-44TB because of HAMR know-how which makes use of laser heating to briefly cut back disk coercivity. This enables for smaller magnetic grains, bettering information stability and density whereas decreasing interference, so HDDs can retailer extra information per platter with long-term reliability.
Enter HDMR know-how
Western Digital isn’t the one drive producer banking on HAMR to supercharge the capacities of laborious drives.
Its large rival Seagate just lately debuted a 36TB drive while revealing a 60TB model is coming, and in particularly dangerous information for WD, it additionally launched a bid to accumulate HAMR specialist Intevac whose sputtering machines are used on over 65% of the world’s laborious disks. Though Seagate is Intevac’s most important buyer, WD additionally makes use of the corporate’s tech.
By the 2030s, Western Digital expects HAMR to be outmoded by HDMR (often known as bit-pattern recording), which is able to lead the push for 100TB+ HDD capacities. The tech, which is reported to be fairly pricey, makes use of nano-patterned magnetic media with discrete magnetic “dots” to spice up information placement, cut back noise, and enhance areal density.
Western Digital isn’t solely specializing in conventional laborious drives, it’s additionally exploring new development alternatives. In AI compute, the corporate is investigating superior computational fashions reminiscent of Boltzmann and Ising, in addition to neuromorphic computing, which may allow extra environment friendly, brain-like processing architectures for AI workloads.
The corporate can also be trying into long-term DNA and ceramic storage, two rising applied sciences which have the potential to supply extraordinarily sturdy and high-density information preservation for archival wants. Within the medtech sector, the corporate is contemplating creating magnetic biosensors and nanopore know-how, which may have important functions in biomedical diagnostics and customized medication.
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