The future of computing at IBM Zurich research labs

Experts have been predicting the death of tape as a storage medium for years – but IBM researchers predict it will continue to be the best way to store archived data for a long time yet. In this picture, IBM Fellow Evangelos Eleftheriou stands behind a demonstration that shows a standard tape cartridge able to store 35Tb of data – about 44 times the capacity of today's IBM LTO Generation 4 cartridge. A capacity of 35Tb is sufficient to store the text of 35 million books, which would require 248 miles of bookshelves. The technology is being developed to help support archiving of the vast amounts of data being generated by the Square Kilometre Array.