As artificial intelligence continues its dizzying ascent, the unsung hero of the digital age is making a comeback: Tape storage. Once dismissed as outdated, tape storage is now being hailed as a strategic asset for the exponential growth driven by AI.

But what, in particular, is spurring this full-circle moment? And how is tape storage set to bolster AI’s position as a critical business enabler?

“We’re almost coming full circle at this point, and I think that’s why we should be paying attention to tape,” said Vinny Choinski (pictured, right), founder and principal analyst at Triptych Info LLC. “People are starting to try to figure out how to get some of the efficiencies of tape into a lot of their IT workflows at this point. I think that AI would be a top priority for most companies. I think they should not overlook it in their AI initiatives when it comes to tape technology.”

Choinski, alongside Mitch Seigle (left), chief marketing officer of Spectra Logic Corp. and David Feller (middle), chief technology officer of Spectra Logic, spoke with theCUBE’s Christophe Bertrand at the Data Protection & AI Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed tape storage as a critical tool for resilience, sustainability and scalability in the AI age. (* Disclosure below.)

The surprising relevance of tape storage in AI workflows

Originally used for booting mainframes and operating systems, tape storage subsequently became synonymous with backup. Today’s AI-driven IT environments, however, are rediscovering the technology’s efficiency and cost benefits.

AI models depend on vast datasets, and rather than working with culled or summarized data, organizations are now striving to analyze complete datasets. In turn, tape provides a scalable and affordable way to store this raw data nearline and access it as needed for retraining AI models or supporting iterative machine learning workflows, according to Feller.

“Everybody talks about how to keep [graphics processing units] loaded up as dramatically as they can because it’s all about the cost of the GPUs and the data centers,” he said. “But the next step beyond that is what to do over the next 30 days, in the next six months, the next 10 years? And there are plenty of applications if you’re a self-driving car manufacturer or in the space of dynamically creating video … You need to retrain your models. You need to make sure that you keep those models [in the] long term. Tape, in particular, is low-cost. It’s the low-power leader that very much complements what’s going on with the rise of power in the GPU space.”

Additionally, tape’s unique advantages extend beyond storage capacity. It inherently supports air-gapped storage, making it highly resilient to ransomware attacks and cyber threats. It also enables data sovereignty, giving organizations control over their most sensitive information, Siegle added.

“Tape storage is probably intrinsically the most cyber resilient technology with built-in true air gap capabilities and mutability; that’s a very important thing,” he said. “With sovereignty, of course, as the value of the data goes up, the need to protect it and maintain control over it is important. But I think the big angle here is that the scale of data growth being driven by AI will be exponential if not logarithmic.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Data Protection & AI Summit:

(* Disclosure: Spectra Logic Corp. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Spectra Logic nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE