SBIR-STTR Award

Modern high rate, high energy physics experiments require fast, petabyte scale storage as a key requirement for fast computation and data analysis in a distributed data grid environment. However, existing high-speed commercial solutions do not cost-effectively scale to the petabyte storage range. This project will apply low-cost, commodity magnetic disk drive technology to develop a portable, fifty terabyte module, scalable to a petabyte at a cost comparable to the robotic tape libraries in use today. In Phase I, various hardware and software tests will be used to test the validity of several new concepts. A scaled-down two Terabyte prototype will be constructed, which will serve as the test system for the majority of the planned work. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by awardee: The technology should not only have application to high energy physics but also to time critical environments where access to very large medical imaging or map databases are required.

Modern high-rate, high-energy physics experiments require fast, petabyte scale storage as a key requirement for fast computation and data analysis in a distributed data grid environment. However, existing high-speed commercial solutions do not cost-effectively scale to the petabyte storage range. This project will apply low-cost, commodity magnetic disk drive technology to develop a portable, fifty terabyte module, scalable to a petabyte at a cost comparable to the robotic tape libraries in use today. In Phase I, a fully functional prototype with a capacity of two terabytes was constructed and the feasibility of the basic approach was demonstrated. Phase II will result in a production-ready module with a storage capacity of 20-50 terabytes. A 100 terabyte system based on the technology also will be demonstrated.

Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee:
The technology should be viable as a short term backup solution in enterprise applications and can be applied to time critical environments where access to very large medical imaging or map databases is required.