Western Digital mentioned at OCP Global Summit final week that over half of arduous drives for information facilities will use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) know-how in 2023. At current Western Digital is the one provider of SMR HDDs managed by hosts, however the know-how is gaining help by {hardware}, software program, and functions.
SMR know-how to spice up capability of arduous drives pretty simply however at the price of some efficiency trade-offs because of the read-modify-write cycle launched by shingled tracks. Since operators of datacenters are eager about maximizing their storage capacities, they’re inclined to spend money on software program that may mitigate peculiarities of SMR. As a end result, a number of years after Western Digital launched its first host-managed SMR HDDs, an increasing number of firms are adopting them. Right now, the overwhelming majority of datacenter arduous drives are based mostly on perpendicular magnetic recording know-how, however WD states that in 4 years SMR HDDs will depart PMR drives behind.
Obviously, utilization of SMR won’t be the one methodology to extend capacities of arduous drives. Energy-assisted PMR applied sciences (e.g., MAMR, HAMR, and so on.) may also be utilized by Western Digital. In the approaching quarters the corporate intends to launch MAMR-based HDDs that includes a 16 TB (ePMR) and 18 TB (eSMR) capability. The firm additionally plans to introduce 20 TB HDDs in 2020.
High-capacity arduous drives should not going to get replaced by high-capacity SSDs any time quickly, in keeping with Western Digital. HDDs will proceed to price considerably lower than SSDs on per-TB foundation. Therefore, they are going to be used to retailer 6.5 occasions extra information than datacenter SSDs in 2023.
Source: Western Digital Presentation at OCP, YouTube
