| From: | Mike Bobroff <AirWisp@***.COM> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Something interesting in the real world ... |
| Date: | Tue, 17 Feb 1998 10:19:47 EST |
By Kourosh Karimkhany
Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO (Feb. 17) - Seagate Technology Inc. plans to announce Tuesday
that it has figured out a way to use lasers, microscopic lenses and tiny
mirrors to potentially pack 10 to 20 times more data onto computer hard disk
drives.
More importantly, the new mechanism, called Optically Assisted Winchester
technology, will allow Seagate to sidestep a massive engineering problem that
looms over the $50 billion data storage industry in the next decade, the
company said.
Disk drives are the main devices that store information permanently inside a
computer. Along with the microprocessor, they determine a computer's price and
computing power.
In recent years, disk drive makers have been able to boost the amount of data
that can be stored magnetically on a disk's storage area by 60 percent a year.
That has been a key reason why computers double in performance every two years
or so.
But at the current rate of progress and with the limits of magnetic
technology, engineers expect to hit the theoretical maximum density for data
storage in about 10 years. That is like the oil industry not having room to
drill new sites.
With the help of lasers and tiny optics, Seagate will be able to avoid that
wall, Chairman Alan Shugart said. The first product using the new technology
will be announced later this year, he said.
''This technology is going to permit us to increase storage density, which
will reduce the cost to the customer and continue the growth of the computer
industry,'' Shugart said.
Seagate's OAW technology is not new. It is based on the principle behind
special drives that use sensitive magnets, guided by laser beams, to record
data in spaces as small as a few atoms. But the magneto-optical drives are
slow and expensive, partly because they rely on cumbersome lenses and mirrors.
The key to Seagate's approach is tiny optics. Seagate has figured out how to
make mirrors and lenses no bigger than the head of a pin, using the same
techniques that chip makers use to etch tiny circuits on semiconductors.
The optics sit on the drive's recording head and shine a tiny swath of laser
light on the drive's recording platter. That swath acts as the boundary within
which magnetic signals are recorded.
''There have been people doing magneto-optic disk drives for 30 years, but
they have not been competitive with magnetic drives on cost and performance,''
Shugart said. ''We took a harder look at this in recent years because of the
theoretical limit.''
Shugart said Seagate acquired the expertise a couple of years ago when it
bought closely held Quinta Corp., now a subsidiary of Seagate, based in Scotts
Valley, Calif.
Seagate plans to unveil its new Optical Technology Development Center in San
Jose, Calif., Tuesday. The center's aim is to foster the growth of other
companies to make components based on the technology, Seagate executives said.
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On a side note, the above is copyrighted or trademarked, whichever it is ...
Mike
