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The problem, as always, is that if this is just a single company, then they are going to die a quiet death from not being able to break into the market. If they

The problem, as always, is that if this is just a single company, then they are going to die a quiet death from not being able to break into the market. If they're a single company selling licenses to their patents and production line, then maybe it'll work.

hellotomyrars 3y ago
I think they could absolutely make it work as a single company. The hurdle is proving the technology actually works and manufacturing it. If they can actually produce the product they claim, I don’t think failing to break in to the market will be much of a concern. They’d be in a league of their own. However, if the tech doesn’t actually work they way they claim, or if competing tech can do the job better, then they’ll go nowhere. Realistically, if they deliver on the product they claim to have they’re not going to last long but not because the company fails. They’ll be swept up by a bigger player in the industry.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I think AWS, Azure, and GCP would be very interested in such a technology. It could serve as a glacier replacement.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago
  All three of those would prefer the cheapest, immediately replaceable option of off the shelf drives rather than small run, low availability drives. Even if the dollar per petabyte figure is lower, "we can't make that many" is a problem if you want to sell to AWS and friends. It's going to be a long time before these drives hit AWS scale, so they'll need to win over the much smaller fish first. And of course these days with AWS, the other risk is Amazon going "yeah we're just going to literally steal your idea and make our own, and there's nothing you can do about it because no lawsuit you bring would fine us an amount we can't just write off as a business expense" if it'll save them enough money.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Aws at least is ok with exotic technologies if they’re an order of magnitude or more beneficial. The scales discussed are not on magnetic roadmaps and are compelling enough. Glacier is today a fairly custom hardware kit built around tape infrastructure and used to be based on spinning disks. They’ve redeveloped it at least once and would again

hellotomyrars 3y ago

I think they could absolutely make it work as a single company. The hurdle is proving the technology actually works and manufacturing it. If they can actually produce the product they claim, I don’t think failing to break in to the market will be much of a concern. They’d be in a league of their own. However, if the tech doesn’t actually work they way they claim, or if competing tech can do the job better, then they’ll go nowhere. Realistically, if they deliver on the product they claim to have they’re not going to last long but not because the company fails. They’ll be swept up by a bigger player in the industry.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I think AWS, Azure, and GCP would be very interested in such a technology. It could serve as a glacier replacement.

TheRealPomax 3y ago
All three of those would prefer the cheapest, immediately replaceable option of off the shelf drives rather than small run, low availability drives. Even if the dollar per petabyte figure is lower, "we can't make that many" is a problem if you want to sell to AWS and friends. It's going to be a long time before these drives hit AWS scale, so they'll need to win over the much smaller fish first. And of course these days with AWS, the other risk is Amazon going "yeah we're just going to literally steal your idea and make our own, and there's nothing you can do about it because no lawsuit you bring would fine us an amount we can't just write off as a business expense" if it'll save them enough money.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Aws at least is ok with exotic technologies if they’re an order of magnitude or more beneficial. The scales discussed are not on magnetic roadmaps and are compelling enough. Glacier is today a fairly custom hardware kit built around tape infrastructure and used to be based on spinning disks. They’ve redeveloped it at least once and would again