IBM Corp today finally launches the long-awaited New Tape Product as the IBM 3590 High Performance Tape Subsystem, and as an OEM product as the Magstar. Supporting AS/400s, RS/6000s, the SP2 parallel systems and Solaris boxes via a Fast and Wide SCSI-2 interface as well as System/390 mainframes via the channels, the 3590 can read and write data at an instantaneous rate of 9M-bytes per second, and as promised (CI No 2,618) each half-inch cartridge can hold 10Gb of uncompressed data, and up to 30Gb compressed. Delays in the launch of the tape drive had been attributed to problems with the logical volume management of small data sets, seen as crucial to the attractiveness of the product, and it appears that it is being launched without this capability. IBM says it will deliver volume stacking, a technology that enables multiple logical volumes of data to be stored on one tape cartridge, on its Escon-attached library in 1996. With Magstar, IBM has adopted a serpentine, longitudinal recording technique that enables data to be recorded and read-verified in a bidirectional mode; IBM says a large number of tracks can be recorded across the width of tape, thereby increasing data capacity but not access time. It says this technique also causes less stress to the tape or heads than helical scan technology and one of Magstar’s magnetoresistive heads can be expected to last 10 to 20 times longer than a helical scan one. IBM says that in a stand-alone configuration the 3590 can operate as a mini-library with up to 300Gb of storage for compressed data in a ten-cartridge Automatic Cartridge Facility that has a random access mode of operation. Magstar can be integrated into IBM’s existing tape libraries, the 3495 and later models of the 3494, to offer Terabytes of data storage. The SCSI model s will be available on July 28 for end users, and in evaluation quantities for potential OEM customers in the third quarter; the Escon version will follow in the second half. No prices were given.
