在人工智能产业高速发展的背景下，一项被许多人视为“上个世纪产物”的存储技术正在迎来复兴。日本富士胶片近日宣布，将投入100亿日元（约合6400万美元）扩充数据存储磁带产能，以满足全球不断增长的数据归档需求。
根据规划，富士胶片将在2026财年至2028财年期间扩大位于日本神奈川县小田原市工厂的生产规模。公司预计，扩建完成后，相关生产能力将提升至当前水平的约五倍，以应对来自云计算服务商、数据中心运营商以及企业客户持续增长的订单需求。
近年来，生成式人工智能快速普及，大模型训练和推理产生了海量数据。虽然高性能固态硬盘和硬盘系统承担着数据处理任务，但对于长期保存的数据而言，磁带依然具有明显优势。其单位存储成本更低、能耗更小，并且适合长期归档，因此重新受到科技行业关注。
富士胶片此次扩产的重点产品是最新一代LTO-10磁带。作为目前行业主流的磁带存储标准，LTO技术最初由IBM、HPE和Quantum等企业共同推动开发，旨在为企业级数据归档提供统一且开放的解决方案。
最新发布的LTO-10单卷磁带原生容量可达40TB，在数据压缩条件下最高可保存100TB数据，同时具备每秒400MB的数据传输速度。虽然这一性能难以与现代固态存储设备相比，但对于备份和冷数据存档场景而言已经足够。
除成本优势外，磁带还因网络安全需求而重新获得重视。由于磁带能够与网络彻底断开，实现物理隔离保存，因此能够有效降低勒索软件和其他网络攻击造成的数据损失风险。这使其在金融机构、科研组织以及大型云服务商中仍然具有重要地位。
业内人士指出，随着人工智能模型规模持续扩大以及数据存储需求快速增长，企业正在重新评估各种存储方案的长期成本。磁带凭借大容量、低能耗和高可靠性的特点，再次成为数据中心基础设施的重要组成部分。
未来几年，磁带技术仍将持续演进。按照行业路线图，下一代LTO-11标准预计将进一步提高存储密度和单卷容量，为不断扩张的数据世界提供更大的存储空间。
从表面上看，人工智能推动的是先进GPU、数据中心和高性能服务器的发展；但在产业链的另一端，这股浪潮同样让拥有数十年历史的磁带存储技术焕发新生。随着全球数据量持续激增，这项曾经被认为逐渐退出主流舞台的技术，正在迎来新的黄金时期。
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In the context of the rapid development of the artificial intelligence industry, a storage technology that many consider to be a “product of the last century” is being revived. The Japanese Fuji film recently announced that it would invest 10 billion yen (approximately $64 million) to expand the data storage tape production capacity to meet the growing global data archiving needs.
It is planned that during the financial period 2026 to 2028, Fuji film will expand the production of the Oda Municipal Plant in Kanagawa County, Japan. The company expects that upon completion of the expansion, the associated production capacity will increase to about five times the current level to meet the increasing demand for orders from cloud computing service providers, data centre operators and business clients.
In recent years, generating artificial intelligence has spread rapidly, and LLM training and reasoning have generated big data. While high-performance solid-state hard drives and hard disk systems carry data-processing tasks, the tape continues to have a clear advantage over data stored over the long term. Their unit storage costs are lower, their energy consumption is smaller and they are suitable for long-term archiving, and are therefore of renewed interest to the technology industry.
The main product of this expansion of Fuji film is the latest generation of LTO-10 tapes. As a standard for tape storage, which is currently mainstream in the industry, LTO technology was first developed by enterprises such as IBM, HPE and Quantum, with the aim of providing a unified and open solution to the archiving of enterprise-level data.
The primary capacity of the latest LTO-10 series of publish can be up to 40 TB, which can be saved up to 100 TB data under data compression conditions with a data transfer rate of 400 MB per second. While this performance is difficult to compare with modern solid storage equipment, it is sufficient for backup and cold data archiving scenarios.
In addition to cost advantages, the tape was re-emphasized because of network security needs. As the tape can be completely disconnected from the network and kept physically isolated, it can effectively reduce the risk of data loss from extortion software and other cyber attacks. This has made it important for financial institutions, scientific research organizations and large cloud service providers.
Industry has noted that, as the scale of artificial intelligence models continues to expand and the demand for data storage grows rapidly, enterprises are reassessing the long-term costs of various storage programmes. The tapes once again become an important component of the data centre infrastructure by virtue of their high capacity, low energy consumption and high reliability.
Tape technology will continue to evolve in the coming years. In line with the industry road map, the next generation of LTO-11 standards is expected to further increase storage density and single volume capacity, providing greater storage space for the expanding data world.
On the surface, artificial intelligence drives the development of advanced GPUs, data centres and high-performance servers; on the other side of the industrial chain, however, the wave has also rejuvenated tape storage technologies that have been in existence for decades. As global data volumes continue to surge, this technology, once considered to be gradually out of the mainstream stage, is ushering in a new golden period.
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