Huawei Develops SSD-Tape Hybrid Drive with 72 TB Capacity

[AleksandarK]

Huawei is advancing archive storage technology with the development of a new solution called the Magneto-Electric Disk (MED). Aiming to provide an alternative to traditional hard drives, this storage device merges tape and SSD technologies to deliver high capacity and low power consumption. The first-generation MED can hold up to 72 TB of data in a compact 7-inch housing and uses significantly less energy than standard HDDs. The MED was developed as part of Huawei's efforts to mitigate potential supply shortages of conventional hard drives, particularly given the US export restrictions to China. By combining tape storage, traditionally slow but reliable, with a high-speed SSD, Huawei has designed a hybrid storage solution that addresses both speed and efficiency needs.

Data is initially recorded on the SSD for quick access and is then written to the tape in sequential blocks for long-term storage. Frequently accessed data, or "warm" data, stays on the SSD for faster retrieval, while "cold" data, accessed less often, is stored on the tape. According to early specifications, a MED rack can store over 10 petabytes and consumes under 2,000 watts of power, significantly less than HDD-based storage. This efficiency could redefine data archiving, especially for large-scale data centers. Data throughput on the MED is projected to reach 8 GB/s, highlighting its potential to handle high-demand environments. The MED is expected to launch in 2025, with a second, more compact generation targeting a 3.5-inch form factor in 2026 or 2027.



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[lilhasselhoffer]

So...this is basically the same as existing solutions where you combine a "hot" memory utilizing an SSD and a "cold" memory of HDD...or the hybrid drives that died out whenever a 2TB SATA drive was anywhere near affordable for an SSD?

I'd point and laugh about "Chinese Innovation"...but I find it infinitely funnier that somebody somewhere is going to trust a Chinese black manufacturer made VHS tape to store their data and think accessing it in anything even close to a reasonable amount of time is possible. Anyone who has used Zip drives will tell you that random accessing them is not something you ever want to do...and the difference between their "warm" memory and cold storage could literally be an entire tape reel. Remember the annoyance of a VHS tape rewinding a 90 minute movie? Now imagine that but for accessing what, thousands of times more data than a VHS tape could ever hope to hold. It's almost funny that they are trying to sell this as anything but large and ultra cheap data backup...because that is why Zip Drive still exists...not some magical and reasonably useful storage system for everyday use.

Next they'll roll out a new punch-card storage system, make it out of flexible glass, and call it functionally eternal storage. The jokes write themselves.

 

[kondamin]

Only reasonable use for this technology in my mind is for video.the proxy file on the ssd and the uncompressed data on tape.

quick to scrub trough and rendering can take a good while

 

[LabRat 891]

Been wondering for awhile why there wasn't a standardized setup for this.
I assume It's just like DRAM cache on a NAND SSD; merely slower.

So...this is basically the same as existing solutions where you combine a "hot" memory utilizing an SSD and a "cold" memory of HDD...or the hybrid drives that died out whenever a 2TB SATA drive was anywhere near affordable for an SSD?

I'd point and laugh about "Chinese Innovation"...but I find it infinitely funnier that somebody somewhere is going to trust a Chinese black manufacturer made VHS tape to store their data and think accessing it in anything even close to a reasonable amount of time is possible. Anyone who has used Zip drives will tell you that random accessing them is not something you ever want to do...and the difference between their "warm" memory and cold storage could literally be an entire tape reel. Remember the annoyance of a VHS tape rewinding a 90 minute movie? Now imagine that but for accessing what, thousands of times more data than a VHS tape could ever hope to hold. It's almost funny that they are trying to sell this as anything but large and ultra cheap data backup...because that is why Zip Drive still exists...not some magical and reasonably useful storage system for everyday use.

Next they'll roll out a new punch-card storage system, make it out of flexible glass, and call it functionally eternal storage. The jokes write themselves.

To be fair, 3D Crystalline data storage and PCM isn't far-flung from holes in paper.

 

[kapone32]

Did not Seagate have something like this 10 years ago. Did AMD not offer this as a software solution about 8 years ago?

 

[kondamin]

Did not Seagate have something like this 10 years ago. Did AMD not offer this as a software solution about 8 years ago?

AMD storeMI?
harddrives with a bit of nand and regular platters

the concept of tierd storage isn’t new, what they are doing here is just silly and next to useless for 99% of users because of the fragility and slowness of tape.

i find it hard to understand why china as a Nation has managed to get chip Production going but hasn’t bothered to get a hard drive maker under a national label

 

[Prima.Vera]

So...this is basically the same as existing solutions where you combine a "hot" memory utilizing an SSD and a "cold" memory of HDD...or the hybrid drives that died out whenever a 2TB SATA drive was anywhere near affordable for an SSD?

I'd point and laugh about "Chinese Innovation"...but I find it infinitely funnier that somebody somewhere is going to trust a Chinese black manufacturer made VHS tape to store their data and think accessing it in anything even close to a reasonable amount of time is possible. Anyone who has used Zip drives will tell you that random accessing them is not something you ever want to do...and the difference between their "warm" memory and cold storage could literally be an entire tape reel. Remember the annoyance of a VHS tape rewinding a 90 minute movie? Now imagine that but for accessing what, thousands of times more data than a VHS tape could ever hope to hold. It's almost funny that they are trying to sell this as anything but large and ultra cheap data backup...because that is why Zip Drive still exists...not some magical and reasonably useful storage system for everyday use.

Next they'll roll out a new punch-card storage system, make it out of flexible glass, and call it functionally eternal storage. The jokes write themselves.

It doesn't work that way. Those tapes are not working stand-alone. Usually they are in some kind of RAID 10 with 16 or more per cluster. Access times are reduced significantly, the more drives are on the cluster. Depends on their setup.

 

[Wirko]

Eh. And I thought they're filling flash chips with data, then putting them on reel tape for storage. That would be something.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Seems stupid to me. Tape means making very very cheap media, but expensive drives. If you're packaging the drive / reading mechanism with the tape, then what's the point?

Tape has rewind times in the ~1+ minutes. If you miss the cache, its over a minute before the computer responds. That's fine for a lot of use cases, but its not something that you can ignore. Any software system that is using tapes as a kind of backing instinctively deals with this somehow (ex: using tapes for Backup purposes, where 1 minute delays aren't a big deal).

But if you're using tape for backup purposes, the RAM (Flash or DRAM, or whatever) is nearly useless.

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Lets put it this way: if 90% of your data were in the cache and accessible within effectively 0 seconds, but 10% of your data was in tape and needed a wind to reach it.... you are still averaging 6-seconds per access. (or 6000 miliseconds).

A 7200 Hard Drive averages 4-miliseconds per access.