Necessity is the mom of invention: Huawei is pairing its supercharged SSD with a 60-year outdated piece of know-how — seemingly due to US export restrictions

Huawei develops SSD-tape hybrid for heat and chilly knowledge storage
MED system presents environment friendly storage with NAND speeds
First-gen holds 72TB, makes use of 10% of the ability required by disk drives

It’s no secret that Chinese language firms have gotten more and more creative in relation to circumventing the challenges attributable to the US export tech restrictions that forestall entry to superior semiconductor know-how and important parts.

Huawei, specifically, is main the way in which right here because it appears to be like to turn out to be China’s reply to Nvidia, and was just lately reported courting Chinese language hyperscalers to use its new Ascend AI chip as a substitute of Nvidia’s H100.

Blocks & Information reviews that Huawei has developed an SSD-tape hybrid which mixes Magneto-Electrical Disk (MED) archive storage with a Huawei-developed tape drive. This hybrid will allow the supply of heat and chilly knowledge storage in a single answer.

(Picture credit score: Blocks & Information/Huawei)

Anticipated to reach subsequent yr

This growth was first reported again in March 2024, however Blocks & Information now has a presentation picture and extra particulars concerning the MED.

The positioning writes: “The MED is a sealed unit presenting a disk-like, block storage interface to the outside world, not a streaming tape interface. Inside the enclosure, there are two separate storage media devices: a solid-state drive with NAND, and a tape system, including a tape motor for moving the tape ribbon, a read-write head, and tape spools.”

In contrast to conventional tape cartridges with a single lengthy reel, the MED incorporates a compact design with a tape reel half the size of an LTO tape and an extra empty reel for used tape. This setup permits the MED to deal with knowledge storage extra effectively whereas integrating each solid-state and tape storage applied sciences.

The system features as a dual-purpose answer, appearing as an archive for chilly knowledge and nearline storage for heat knowledge. Heat knowledge is accessed quickly by the SSD at NAND pace, making it ultimate for often used data. Chilly knowledge, saved on the tape, requires extra time to retrieve (as much as two minutes), because the system should find the information and alter the tape ribbon to the proper place for studying.

The primary era of the MED, anticipated to reach subsequent yr, reportedly holds 72TB of knowledge (it’s unclear whether or not this refers to uncooked or compressed capability) and consumes simply 10% of the ability required by disk drives. Based on Huawei, a MED rack will ship 8GBps, maintain greater than 10PB, and require lower than 2kW of electrical energy. A second-generation mannequin might comply with in 2026 or 2027.