Ceramic-based data storage solutions provider, Cerabyte becomes an official CERN openlab member. As a member, Cerabyte will collaborate to develop new data storage solutions that are secure, sustainable and cost effective for its research activities.
CERN openlab is a public-private partnership with a focus on accelerating computing for science and exploring innovative, sustainably responsible technologies.
As data storage faces several challenges, including scaling, supply, energy and budget constraints, Cerabyte technology addresses them by minimizing electronic waste and reducing the energy consumption of data cernters globally.
“Inspired by humanity’s ancient data storage, the Babylonian cuneiform tablets, Cerabyte’s media technology uses ceramic materials to retain data virtually forever,” said Christian Pflaum, CEO and Founder of Cerabyte. “We are thrilled to collaborate with CERN openlab and further develop Cerabyte’s durable and sustainable data storage technology to support CERN’s long-term data storage needs.”
Cerabyte technology leverages semiconductor fab tool roadmap, using Digital Mirror Device to write data matrices on a durable ceramic data storage medium. The development of its first petabyte-scale system might lead to a system for ceramic data storage by 2025/26 that will be accessed by and eventually hosted at CERN.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. The LHC experiments collect a vast amount of data that needs to be stored as a basis for future research. In collaboration with institutes around the globe, CERN has made significant progress in developing, prototyping, deploying, and operating an innovative and robust data-intensive computing infrastructure, including the CERN data centers and the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG). CERN openlab is a ground-breaking public-private partnership providing a structured and collaborative framework for industry and research organizations to engage with CERN researchers.
“As an organization with almost 70 years of history, CERN has created large volumes of data of many different types,” said Maria Girone, Head of CERN openlab. “It is critical for CERN to store data indefinitely in a sustainable, cost-effective, secure and resilient way. With this collaboration, we aim to advance data preservation research and inform CERN’s long-term plans for data archival.”
