GPEF 2026 Keynote 2: John Morris, EVP and CTO, Seagate
ONE OF THE WORLD'S HIGHEST VOLUME LASER USERS MAKES HARD DRIVES Why was the CTO of a hard drive company on stage at a photonics forum? Because Seagate now builds photonic integrated circuits by the tens of millions every quarter. This is the second of eight GPEF 2026 keynotes from Málaga, released one a day. John Morris started with the economics. Data demand grows around 25 percent a year, and AI adds to it. Cost per bit tracks areal density, and perpendicular recording, which carried the industry for 20 years, is reaching its limits. The physics problem is grain size. A bit on today's media…