Two More LTO Generations Added to Roadmap

The LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP, IBM Corp. and Quantum Corp., announced an extended product roadmap that includes two additional generations with more capacity and throughput.

The extended roadmap now includes generations 9 and 10. The new generation guidelines call for compressed capacities of 62.5TB for generation 9 and 120TB for generation 10*.

“The production of six generations of drives and a well defined long term roadmap are key elements for the success of LTO,” said Joel Tax, Santa Clara Research Group. “With a roadmap showing four more generations beyond the current one, the LTO Program has shown commitment to innovation and support for the format.“

Transfer rates are expected to increase. Plans include compressed transfer rates of up to 1,770MB/s for generation 9 and 2,750MB/s for generation 10*.

“LTO technology continues to set the standard for cost-optimized backup and long-term archive storage,” said Chris Powers, VP, data center development unit, HP. “With the extension of the roadmap, organizations can expect advancements in capacity and efficiency that lower costs by reducing management overhead and provide the flexibility needed to scale for future growth.”

The two future generations will continue to provide the same features that have made LTO technology the tape storage option of choice for millions of users. Each new generation will include read-and-write backwards compatibility with the prior generation as well as read compatibility with cartridges from two generations prior, helping to protect investments and ease implementation. Other features include WORM, encryption and partitioning – which allows for LTFS capabilities to enable easy file location and broader compatibility.

The current generation of LTO technology – LTO-6 – supports tape cartridge storage compressed capacity of up to 6.25TB*, more than twice the compressed capacity over the previous generation, and tape drive data transfer rates of up to 400MB/s* for over 1.4TB of storage performance an hour per drive. As with previous generations, LTO-6 drives provide backward compatibility with the ability to read and write LTO-5 cartridges and read LTO-4 cartridges.

The LTO Program will be providing further insight into LTO technology and roadmap plans for a range of data managers this fall at IBC in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, ASIS in Atlanta, GA, and Supercomputing in New Orleans, LA.

How to License LTO Ultrium Technology
The LTO Program has historically offered several different license packages – from enhanced packages that provide the specifications and licenses to manufacture LTO Ultrium products, to basic packages providing LTO format specifications. Buyers seeking LTO Ultrium format-compliant products should look for the LTO Ultrium format compliance verification trademarks on both tape drives and data cartridges.

* Assuming a 2.5:1 compression achieved with larger compression history buffer available beginning with LTO-6 drives.

LTO Roadmap