Magnetic tape, which dominated the analog era before fading away with the decline of home video players and cassette radios, is being revived for new uses in the era of artificial intelligence (AI).

On October 29, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) reported that Fujifilm has decided to increase its supply capacity for data storage magnetic tape by fivefold.

The company plans to invest 10 billion yen (approx. 85 billion won) by 2028 in its plant in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, to boost production of magnetic tape.

Production will be centered on cutting-edge products with capacities of up to 100 terabytes (TB; 1,024 gigabytes), raising shipment volume based on capacity to five times that of last year.

Magnetic tape is a method of recording data on the surface of the tape using magnetic properties.

This is the first time in 20 years that Fujifilm is making a large-scale production-increase investment in this field.

The company began researching magnetic tape for TV broadcasting equipment in 1954 and once dominated the video and audio recording tape market, but magnetic tape lost its prominence as it was pushed aside by digital data storage devices such as solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs).

It has regained attention as generative AI has exploded, leading to the mushrooming construction of data centers.

In the AI era, magnetic tape is used for data backup in data centers.

Its advantage is that it can be stored long-term while disconnected from the network, lowering the risk of modification or loss of confidential data due to cyberattacks.

Financial and research institutions also use magnetic tape for data backups.

Although its transfer speed is slower compared to SSDs or HDDs, another advantage is its low price.

Nikkei explained, "Magnetic tape, whose presence was fading with the widespread adoption of HDDs and SSDs, is coming back into the spotlight in the AI era," adding, "The ripple effect of the AI boom is reaching even 'mature technologies' like magnetic tape."

(Photo: Yonhap News)