Storage Component Technologies in the Age of
Big Data and Cloud Computing
CAISS Annual Conference 2012
Dr. Steve Hwang, Vice President Media R&D
Seagate Technology, RMO Fremont
October 6, 2012
10/06/2012 CAISS 2
The New Commodity – Big Data & Cloud Computing
Digital Content Explosion
HDD Road Map – HAMR & BPM
Key Factors in the HDD Market
10/06/2012 CAISS 3
New Commodity- Data is the New Oil
Source: Seagate Market & Competitive Intelligence
"Just as the politics of oil shaped the 20th
century industrial economy, so the politics
of data will shape the 21st century digital
economy… data is the new oil, the vital
fuel of our digital economy,“ Andrew Keen, CNN, Jan 27, 2012
Driven by 2 major trends
• Big Data • gathered, e.g., by social networks, online
commerce, …
• used to analyze and shape consumer buying
trends, marketing strategies, medical trends,
financial services, social studies, …
• Cloud Computing • similar in concept to mainframe and client-
server computing of yore
• permanent accessibility from vast number of
smart mobile devices
10/06/2012 CAISS 4
32GBs passes the
human eye every day 18 GB of Games
12 GB of Video
3 GB of Movies
Sponsors:
The Ever Expanding Growth of Information
Source: How Much Information? 2009 UCSD
How Much Information?
2009
Report on American
Consumers
10/06/2012 CAISS 5
Total Industry Petabytes Shipped
Source: Seagate Market & Competitive Intelligence
-
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
CY
00
CY
01
CY
02
CY
03
CY
04
CY
05
CY
06
CY
07
CY
08
CY
09
CY
10
CY
11
Enterprise Consumer Electronics Mobile PC Deskbased PC Retail
Thousands of Petabytes
Exabyte growth is 40% per year…how to meet that
demand?
10/06/2012 CAISS 6
Areal Density Growth Trends
During the last 10 years the number of
drives shipped increased from 200
million to 600 million, this is a 3x
increase in shipped drives
During the same period, the average
capacity of the drive has increase from
17 GB to 565 GB, a 32.5x increase.
With the average number of heads per
drive increasing from 2.5 to 3.5, the
average areal density of the drives
increased by just over 23x (or about
35%/year) during the last ten years
Historically we have used areal
density growth and not more heads
and media or more drives to satisfy
Exabyte growth, but the existing PMR
technology is approaching its limits
10/06/2012 CAISS 7
Why can’t we just build more drives?
Assuming areal density does not increase and the number of
heads per drive remains fixed (in other words, just build more
drives) we would need to expand capacity at 40% per year.
Adding that kind of capacity would cost a company like
Seagate billions of dollars annually
But it would also mean that Dell, Google, Microsoft, etc., would
need to build a new data center every two years at a cost of
$300 million per data center. In addition, these companies
would have to maintain their data centers which means that
their ongoing cost of operations, e.g., power consumption,
would also be growing at 40% per year.
Facebook alone spent $606 million in 2011 on their data
centers.
These added costs will get passed on to consumers in the
form of higher costs
Economically, our customers need us to increase areal
density to keep costs for storage under control and that is
why we need HAMR (or any other technology that
allows us to continue AD growth)! !
Seagate Factory in Thailand
Facebook Data Center in Oregon
10/06/2012 CAISS 8
Approaches for high density
Magnetic recording
Ku • V
Increase Ku
HAMR – Head Assisted Magnetic Recording
BPM – Bit Patterned Media
Increase V Media SNR
Thermal
Stability Writability
10/06/2012 CAISS 9
Why HAMR?
>1Tbpsi
Increase
Areal Density
increase density
by smaller grains
make smaller
grain stable
by increasing
anisotropy
heat media
to write
need localized heat
source (<50nm)
integrated head with near
field transducer
-60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60-1.5
-1.0
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
HAMR vs PMR Media Loops
Mperp/M
S
Field (kOe)
HAMR Media
PMR Media
10/06/2012 CAISS 10
Seagate HAMR 1TB Announcement
1
0
10/06/2012 CAISS 11
A HAMR Drive
To the right is a photo of an actual HAMR drive.
You can tell it is a HAMR drive because it has
the laser warning sticker stuck on the front
Below is a picture of an integrated HAMR head
including the laser (not the same head used in
the drive)
Seagate CEO Steve Luczo gave a presentation
to Wall Street analysts using a fully functional
HAMR drive on Sept. 21, 2012.
Slider
Laser
10/06/2012 CAISS 12
Sputter
Wash
LIM*
Kitting
MDW Aperio
Cert
Glide
UV
Buff
Lube
Post Sputter Wash
Prime
Disk Imprint
Pattern Formation
MTR
NIL
PFP
Polymerized
Imprint Fluid
IMPRIO HD 2200
BPM Process Flow
New Building Blocks: MTR, NIL & PFP
10/06/2012 CAISS 13
(1 µm x 1 µm)
PS-b-PEO
10.5 T/in2
2 T/in2 4 T/in2
To Reach the Unreachable Peaks …
10/06/2012 CAISS 14
Conclusion
The customer base of the storage industry is rapidly changing, and
we need to change accordingly
We need capacity and areal density growth to keep up in an
economical way with the rapid growth of storage demand
We need HAMR (or any other technology that allows us to continue
AD growth)!
HAMR is for real in Seagate’s view is the next HDD technology
By building HAMR drives you gain unique insights into HAMR that
can not be foreseen by spin stands alone
Although read back is largely unaffected by HAMR, major portions of
the drive architecture need to be re-designed to accommodate HAMR