Huawei is reportedly working on introducing its advanced data storage device, the OceanStor Arctic, in 2025.

The core of this new product is an innovative technology called “magneto-electric disk” or MED. However, specifics about this mysterious new type of storage are still under wraps. So the details behind the tech remain undisclosed for now.

Huawei MED OceanStor Arctic storage device

Reportedly, Huawei’s new MED technology will support rack capacities of over 10PB while consuming less than 2kW of power. Huawei also claims a 20% cost reduction over tape storage solutions and a remarkable 90% decrease in power consumption compared to traditional hard drives.

The numbers presented by Huawei are impressive. For instance, today, a typical 42U rack can house up to 288 HDDs, capable of storing up to 8.64PB of data. Such a setup would consume around 2.88kW of power.

There are also 4U storage servers available, like the ASRock Rack 4U100-C612, which can house 100 3.5-inch hard drives and store up to 3PB of data at 1kW. However, 10 such machines would consume a significant amount of power.

Therefore, the reduced power consumption of the Huawei OceanStor Arctic stands out as a key highlight. Yet, the exact methods by which Huawei achieves such drastic power reductions with what appears to be disk-based technology remain unclear.

Furthermore, there are no details available about Huawei’s new MED technology. A report by Tom’s Hardware suggests that the underlying principle of MED technology might be the magneto-electric effect, which creates a connection between the magnetic and electric properties of a material. 

However, this is just an educated guess, and we have to wait until Huawei shares the details and how it can achieve such remarkable efficiency and performance results.

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