This press release is copyrighted by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE). Its use is granted only to journalists and news media.
Magnetic Storage: the Medium That Wouldn't Die
Never before has the number of bits that can be crammed onto each square centimeter of a magnetic disk risen so far so fast. Last April, magnetic storage researchers working in a laboratory at Fujitsu Ltd., in Tokyo, announced they could pack magnetic disks with 8.7 gigabits per square centimeter. In so doing, they bested IBM Corp.'s record of 5.4 Gb/cm2, set just seven months before. For its part, when IBM had announced its record high in October 1999, it was overturning its own previous May high of 3.1 Gb/cm2. For a technology that has been around since 1956, a 180 percent increase in bit density in the course of one year was, well, impressive.
Instead of slowing with age, magnetic disk technology has sped up. Starting in 1997 with IBM's introduction of the first giant magnetoresistive read-and-write head, density has been doubling every year. Semiconductor memory, in contrast, still obeys Moore's Law, taking 18 months to double in density. Researchers now expect disk storage density to continue doubling at least until the middle of this decade. Noting this trend, David Thompson, director of the advanced magnetic recording laboratory at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., declared, "There are no alternative technologies that can dislodge magnetic recording from its present market niche in the next 10 years."
Optimism about the magnetic disk's prospects is the result of researchers continuing to find new, life-extending designs--the use of vertical recording, glass disk substrates, pattern memory, and other emerging technologies that hold great promise.
Contact: Richard Comerford, 212 419 7567, [email protected].For faxed copies of the complete article ["Magnetic storage: the medium that wouldn't die," by Richard Comerford, Senior Editor, IEEE Spectrum, December 2000, pp. 36-39] or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212 419 7561, [email protected].
###
RSS