Seagate Unveils Mozaic 3+ HDD Platform as HAMR Readies for Quantity Ramp
Seagate’s monetary experiences have been indicating imminent mass production of HAMR HDDs for a number of years now, and it seems to be just like the await these drives to look in retail is lastly at an finish. The Seagate Exos product household is getting a 30TB capability level, because of using heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) expertise. The corporate talked to the press final week concerning the Mozaic 3+ platform – their first high-volume HAMR platform – and the way it units the stage for speedy areal density scaling over the following few years.
Seagate’s new Exos 30TB HDDs use platters with an areal density of 3TB per platter, and Seagate has plans to scale that up at a fee of as much as 20% generation-over-generation within the subsequent few years (in comparison with the 8% fee that CMR HDD capacities have been rising at within the final decade or so). The corporate indicated that quantity shipments are occurring this quarter to hyperscalers. Seagate is observing that the typical buyer upgrading from a 16TB standard magnetic recording platform to the brand new 30TB+ HDDs can virtually double the capability of their server racks in the identical footprint, as the brand new drives are drop-in replacements. This brings TCO advantages, significantly when it comes to energy consumption. The corporate is even quantifying that – the Exos X16’s common energy consumption of 9.44W interprets to 0.59W / TB. The brand new Exos 30TB’s equal quantity is a bit larger at 10.5W, however that interprets to a 40% energy financial savings on a per-TB foundation at 0.35W / TB.
The corporate careworn upon the truth that HAMR wanted a bunch of different breakthroughs grouped below the brand new Mozaic 3+ tag with a purpose to obtain the areal density breakthrough enabling the brand new Exos household. These embody:
- Platters utilizing new Pt-Fe alloy
- Plasmonic author
- 7th Gen. spintronic reader
- 12nm built-in controller
Areal density positive aspects are primarily pushed by smaller grain sizes within the magnetic media. Nevertheless, legacy magnetic platter media isn’t steady at very small grain sizes. Together with Showa-Denko, Seagate has developed a superlattice iron-platinum construction with elevated magnetic coercivity to permit for exact and steady information recording. The HAMR course of requires heating up of the grain with a purpose to alter its state, and Seagate has achieved this utilizing a nanophotonic laser that’s vertically built-in into the plasmonic author sub-system. The studying head has additionally wanted to evolve with a purpose to faucet into the smaller grains. All of those developments work collectively because of a newly developed controller (constructed on TSMC’s 12nm course of) that Seagate claims to ship 3x the efficiency of present options.
Seagate expects the Mozaic platform to result in 5TB/platter as early as 2028.
Areal density scaling is without doubt one of the key elements in addressing the HDD capability subject. One side that this scaling has not addressed is the IOPS/TB metric, the place SSDs are in a significantly better place to reap the benefits of developments in host interface expertise. The Mozaic platform is orthogonal to currently-used HDD applied sciences resembling twin actuators and shingled-magnetic recording. Further advantages will be gleaned from these, however the IOPS/TB metric scaling is a side that wants industry-wide efforts to deal with to maintain HDDs related in additional software areas.
Seagate works with distributors resembling Showa-Denko for the platters and TDK for the recording heads. Among the Mozaic 3+ improvements have been collectively developed with them. Whereas the precise particulars of the joint growth are confidential, Seagate indicated that they’ve a time-limited unique use for these technological developments. If, and when, different HDD distributors transfer to HAMR, it seems that Seagate has a wholesome result in fall again on with respect to those core HAMR platform elements. The corporate can also be anticipating the Mozaic 3+ expertise to deal with use-cases as as NAS, and video / imaging markets. It is just a matter of time earlier than HAMR strikes from Exos to the IronWolf and SkyHawk households.
