The numbers they cite for "previous generations" don't match up to the progression of the LTO tape series' capacity. Maybe they are citing "research numbers" that they can do in a lab but aren't production-ready yet. I would certainly assume they are citing "compressed" data figured there.
Also bear in mind that tapes typically store data striped across the tape in multiple tracks and multiple bands. There are four bands per tape and 12-52 wraps per band, so reading the whole tape requires up to 208 passes across the tape.
But yes, to agree with another parallel comment, tape data rates are quite high sequentially (abysmal in random of course, but that's not how they're used). LTO-8 does 750 megabytes per second compressed / 360 megabytes per second raw.
The numbers they cite for "previous generations" don't match up to the progression of the LTO tape series' capacity. Maybe they are citing "research numbers" that they can do in a lab but aren't production-ready yet. I would certainly assume they are citing "compressed" data figured there.
Also bear in mind that tapes typically store data striped across the tape in multiple tracks and multiple bands. There are four bands per tape and 12-52 wraps per band, so reading the whole tape requires up to 208 passes across the tape.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open#Physical_stru...
But yes, to agree with another parallel comment, tape data rates are quite high sequentially (abysmal in random of course, but that's not how they're used). LTO-8 does 750 megabytes per second compressed / 360 megabytes per second raw.