Magnetic tape is going strong in the age of AI, and it's about to get even better - new design materials and capacity boosts mean it's still an enterprise favorite

"Aramid permits the manufacture of significantly thinner and smoother media, enabling longer tape lengths in a standard LTO Ultrium cartridge form factor,"

"This material innovation provides an extra 10 TB of native capacity than the currently available 30 TB LTO-10 cartridge, which is manufactured using different materials."

"The new 40 TB LTO-10 cartridge will help enterprise-class organizations - across healthcare, financial services, media, research, manufacturing, the public sector and beyond - consolidate petabytes efficiently, strengthen cyber resiliency with true offline air-gapping, and keep long-term retention affordable and sustainable."

IBM, Quantum Corp, and HPE's LTO Program introduced a new LTO Ultrium cartridge generation with up to 40 TB native capacity. The increase is enabled by Aramid, a new base film material that allows the manufacture of thinner, smoother media and longer tape lengths within the standard cartridge form factor. The capacity boost adds 10 TB versus the current 30 TB LTO-10 cartridges and responds to surging AI-related data storage demands. The cartridges target enterprise sectors such as healthcare, financial services, media, research, manufacturing, and the public sector to consolidate petabytes, improve cyber resiliency via offline air-gapping, and reduce long-term retention costs. Tape shipments reached 152.9 exabytes (compressed) in 2023.

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