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The Register asked Seagate's Director of Technology Strategy and Product Planning Jason Feist about the company's plans to use multi-actuator technology in upcoming hard disk drives. Seagate insists that the technology can double input/output operations per second (rather than increasing it by, for example, 1.8x), and says that customers have validated the concept:
Howard Marks, founder and chief scientist at Deep Storage Net said: "We've had drives with 2 positioners before (IBM 3380 - one set of heads were dedicated to inner tracks, the other to outer tracks). That was back in the day of linear voice coils so they came from opposite sides of the 14-inch platters."
He identifies a software issue with Seagate's multi-actuator single pivot design: "Most storage software including logical volume managers and file systems, are built with the knowledge that a disk drive can only have it's heads in one place at a time and their queuing logic may mismatch with the multipositioner logic." This means: "It may not double throughput for large I/Os."
It could get close though, as "I understand that Seagate is going to make these look like 2 logical drives via a driver. That should solve #1 above and let systems get 1.8-1.9X IOPS."
[...] El Reg: What are your ideas and thoughts about multi-actuator disk drives and the arguments for and against them?
Jason Feist: We are bullish on this technology. A number of key customers have validated the concept and are working closely with us on the development of the technology.
Hyperscale data center service-level agreements (SLAs) are a critical factor in defining storage deployment needs and designing next-generation technologies that efficiently support storage deployments. In order for TCO (total cost of ownership) to continue to improve, the IOPS of a disk drive need to increase along with the capacity increases we're enabling with new areal density advancements.
The small cost adder that is required for additional components to deliver this performance gain is a much more cost-effective solution than using additional drives/spindles. The hard drive and SSD have a strong relationship in a data center, and both are required to achieve capacity and performance requirements at scale.
The IOPS growth provided by Multi Actuator technology in disk drives enables this relationship to continue to scale into the future.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 11 2018, @11:47PM
The big drives are aimed towards data centers and other enterprise customers. It doesn't make sense to make a consumer-oriented SSD (cheaper, less warranty) because most consumers don't want a multi-thousand dollar SSD.
A 4 TB consumer SSD costs $1,500. That's in a 2.5" form factor.
https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Samsung-PM1633a-MZILS15THMLS-solid-state-drive-15.36-TB-SAS-12Gb-s/4079174.aspx [cdw.com]
There we have it. Someone who will sell you a 15.36 TB SSD (larger than any hard drive a consumer can get), for a reasonable $11,625.
I never claimed that SSDs were more affordable than HDDs. Just that they are getting dense fast. There is absolutely no technical barrier to creating a 128 TB 3.5" prototype SSD today. It can be done, but it will be an expensive niche product on release. There is no way to create the equivalent HDD until many years of research are completed. Fast forward a few years, and SSD manufacturers can create 4-bits-per-cell (QLC) NAND dies with well over 96 layers, and then stack those dies into thick packages (1 TB today, probably 8+ TB later). Then they can stuff as many packages as possible into a 2.5" or 3.5" enclosure. They have a clear path to creating 1 petabyte or larger SSDs. WD and Seagate have a murky path to creating 100 TB HDDs, using technologies such as HAMR, MAMR, and bit-patterned media.
WD and Seagate could produce a 100 TB hard drive by around 2030. Any SSD manufacturer (a group of companies that includes WD and Seagate) can make and sell a 100 TB SSD before 2020.
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