Project Goal

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This project will allow CERN to gain understanding of the possibilities and potential problems of the new archive storage medium using ceramic nanolayers. It represents an opportunity to provide feedback and to guide the development of this technology in a way that is beneficial to CERN.

Overview

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Currently tape is CERN’s archival storage medium of choice, due to its characteristics of reliability, durability and price. While the roadmap for tape is encouraging, tape as a technology is exposed to certain market risks, and CERN should always have an eye on the development of possible alternatives and likely evolution of archival storage.

For many years, IT-SD group has actively engaged with companies doing R&D in innovative storage technologies, including DNA, archive glass and ceramic. At this point, ceramic seems to be the most likely contender to achieve sufficient I/O rates to be useful, within a reasonable time frame (~10 years). The success of this technology would represent a disruptive change to the landscape.

Highlights in 2024

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2024 was the first year of the collaboration. CERN benefited from the in-person participation of Cerabyte at the openlab workshop (in March) to explain the current and future data storage needs. Reciprocally, Cerabyte outlined their product development roadmap. The collaboration was officially announced in August via a BusinessWire press release. 

The collaboration has been influential to the Cerabyte as during the course of discussions CERN has made some product recommendations for consideration. Cerabyte has adopted CERN’s recommendations. 

Cerabyte is developing a digital data format on glass with a robust ECC design as an alternative to QR codes currently used in the prototype system. 

Cerabyte is pursuing a cartridge design for the glass carriers which will leverage the mature infrastructure of the LTO tape cartridge ecosystem.

In March, at CERN’s invitation, Cerabyte presented about “Long-term high-volume data storage in ceramic nano layers” at ACAT 2024

In June CERN participated in an investor reference call and in July CERN provided 1 GB of sample data which will be written to a data carrier.

Next Steps

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The collaboration will focus on 3 areas in the coming year:

Validation of the data format. CERN’s 1GB of real world data will be written with the new ECC format. CERN’s assistance in validation of the carriers in stress/environmental conditions will be very valuable. 

Cerabyte would like to work with CERN toward establishing an open format standard for the Cerabyte data carrier. 

Cerabyte would like to use CERN’s experience in the development of a self-describing format for data written to glass carriers.

More Information

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Project Coordinator: Vladimir Bahyl

Technical Team: Vladimir Bahyl

Collaboration Liaisons: Ed Childers, Vladimir Bahyl, Sebastian Kirsch, Martin Kunze

In partnership with: Cerabyte