The incredible shrinking petabyte: how compression technologies are helping store more data in less space

Computer Technology Review, June, 2004 by Richard Gadomski

In addition to making the data smaller, the storage media itself is being enhanced to hold more of the data on an increasingly smaller space. The first tape storage products utilized magnetic particles coated onto a thin ribbon of metal substrate. As technology evolved, engineers searched for a way to make the layer thinner and thinner--thereby increasing the overall capacity and quality of the recorded information. In 1992, Fujifilm introduced ATOMM technology (Advanced Super Thin Layer and High Output Metal Media), a second, non-metal particle layer to enhance the quality and improve recording densities--a huge industry breakthrough that led to the development of new tape storage formats such as Digital Linear Tape (DLT).

In 2001, Fujifilm engineers took the lead to introduce Nanocubic technology, an entirely new coating technology utilizing both metal and barium ferrite particles to make magnetic recording layers 10X thinner than the super-high resolution of metal particle technology.

This ultra-thin layer coating process controls the thickness of the magnetic layer on a nanometer scale. This is crucial for layering microscopic magnetic particles that must be uniformly coated in order to achieve ultra-low signal-to-noise ratios and higher recording bit densities required. This dispersion technology uses a special organic binder material that has the ability to thoroughly disperse the particles in the coating solution so that a uniformly packed magnetic layer is realized. The technology employs two types of super-fine magnetic particles, both tens of nanometers in scale: Acicular Ferromagnetic Alloy particle and Tabular Ferro-magnetic Hexagonal Barium Ferrite particle.

Nanocubic coating technology will lead to the achievement of the super tape storage capacities, both for helical scan and linear recording mid-range and enterprise class formats. This has great implications on the thriving market of tape storage, and today you'll find tape just about anywhere you find information stored electronically. From the early 1950s, the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Social Security Department continue to store demographic data on tape; bank teller transactions are recorded on tape to provide a permanent record for auditors; and insurance companies back up policyholder data on tape. Storage tape is playing a critical role in today's search for new energy sources as well. Nearly all the major geophysical and petrochemical companies are using tape media to record massive amounts of seismic data as they search for pockets of fuel.

The Future of Compression

There will be a huge demand for the capacity enabled by compression technology from customers in fields such as life sciences and digital media. These industries will create enormous amounts of data via digitized images--on the magnitude of many petabytes (a petabyte = 1,000 terabytes, or the equivalent to 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets full of text) that digital images create. The life sciences industry, in particular, is seeing remarkable information growth and will benefit greatly from this breakthrough technology. In medical imaging alone, the use of PET, SPECT, CT and MRI imaging technologies is estimated to grow up to 67% through 2006, according to health care business intelligence organization Solucient. Fujifilm Medical Systems (one of our sister companies) credited for inventing the digital x-ray, is working with its customers to continuously drive new digital solutions via its software-based digital image and information management system--generating more than 1.8 million images a day.