SMR and HAMR Advancing HDD Areal Density talk in Santa Clara, California, USA
Date:
I gave my 50 minute in-person talk at Storage Developer Conference (SDC) 2025, an annual educational conference hosted by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). The conference took place in Santa Clara, California, USA. This talk reflected on 18 years of SMR evolution, covering physical layouts, filesystems, garbage collection algorithms, device drivers, and simulators. Furthermore, the talk will also discuss how SMR disks integrated with data storage solutions like RAID and deduplication, including real-world use cases of SMR disks by hyperscalers. Finally, I also discussed the synergy between SMR and Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technologies in the context of AI workloads, showcasing how these advancements open new possibilities for next-generation HDDs.
