Kaizhong Gao, Ph.D. of Argonne National Laboratory

Kaizhong Gao, Ph. D.

International Business and Technology Service (IBT Service)

Now at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)

Magnetic data storage technology, such as HDD has had tremendous growth, and only until recently, the areal density capability has slowing down.  It was until last couple of years, 3D NAND based SSD starts to take over some of the HDD market.  In our recent study, a standard data temperature definition which links both capacity and access speed together.  Using this standard data temperature definition, we are able to summarize all digital data properties and put them into one chart.  In addition, in this talk we are going to show how each of the data storage technologies, such as: DRAM, 3D-NAND, HDD, Tape and Blu-ray represent and how the data storage technologies evolution occurs.  As the HDD drive capacity has increased by several orders of magnitude over the past two decades, the average data temperature in the drive is actually reduced.  We will show the universal relation between drive data temperature and its capacity.

Based on the analysis, prediction of future data storage solutions will be given, including several topics that are of great interest to the HDD community, such as:

1. For HDD based data storage server, how to improve its capacity beyond where we are today.


2. Tape and Blu-ray based data archive system, will it be taking more data archive market or it will disappear within the next decade?


3. Where HAMR is going? “Heat” assisted magnetic recording eventually used for “cold” storage.

In addition, we will illustrate the similarities of digital universe vs. physical universe and show that as the amount of data or digital university volume expands, the average temperature of the digital universe is monotonically reduced.  From technology perspective, we show how this theory will impact the data storage and IT industry in the following decades.

Biography:

Kaizhong Gao is the Principal Scientist and Group Leader for the Nanomaterials, Devices and Systems Group in the Energy Systems Division at Argonne National Laboratory, and a Sr. Fellow at Northwestern University. He has been leading advanced R&D for device demonstration and implementation over the past 15 years, with more than 165 issued patents on materials, devices and systems, 70⁺ papers and 2 book chapters after receiving his Ph.D.  He is the only person who is listed as one of the inventors of all 3 major technologies that became HDD industry standard since 2000.  

His primary research includes data storage technology, materials design, development and device integration.  He has led design and integration team, demonstrated the first 1Tb/in² data storage technology using heat assisted magnetic recording. He also hold patents for interlaced magnetic recording and microwave assisted magnetic recording which were featured as the breaking news and technology breakthroughs from two major data storage companies: Seagate Technology and Western Digital Corporation this year in 2017 respectively.  

He was named as the Young Engineer of the Year for the State of Minnesota by Minnesota Federation of Engineering, Science and Technology Societies (MFESTS) in 2009, and Outstanding Professional Engineering for IEEE Region 4 in 2010 and Engineer of the Year for IEEE Twin Cities Section in 2011. He has also received Technical Achievement Award from Information Storage Industrial Consortium (INSIC) in 2004.  He is the Intermag Conference 2015 co-chairman, one of the largest IEEE top tier conference in the world. He has also been the TMRC conference chair in 2011.

He was IEEE Twin Cities Section Magnetics Society officer from 2005-2016, has also served as IEEE Magnetics Society Chapters Chair, Technical Committee Chair, Finance Chair since 2009-2014. He is currently IEEE Magnetics Society Administrative committee (Adcom) elected member.  Over the past, he has served as the guest Professor/Lecturer for IEEE Magnetic Summer School, Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences etc.

Email:

Kaizhong Gao, Ph.D. of Argonne National Laboratory

Biography:

Email: