According to reports from Japanese media on February 18th, Sony has successfully developed a semiconductor laser for high-capacity mechanical hard drives (HDDs), capable of doubling the storage capacity of the HDDs.
By installing this semiconductor laser on the magnetic head used for writing and reading information on HDDs, it becomes possible to write more information than ever before.
Sony Semiconductor, in collaboration with the US HDD giant Seagate Technology, developed this technology. In terms of storage capacity, the capacity of a 3.5-inch HDD can reach 30TB, doubling the previous capacity of 15TB.
Seagate will begin mass-producing high-capacity HDDs this spring, while Sony plans to start mass-producing semiconductor lasers for high-capacity HDDs from May this year. They also plan to establish new production lines in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, and Thailand factories, with an expected investment of 5 billion yen.
With the development of generative artificial intelligence, the amount of data processing and storage required is also experiencing explosive growth. According to Statista's estimate, global data generation is projected to reach 181 ZB (zettabytes = 100 trillion gigabytes) by 2025, a 90% increase from 2022.
Correspondingly, the global market size of data centers is projected to reach $360 billion in 2025, marking a 15% increase from 2022. This technology could potentially help alleviate storage facility shortages.
