• The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
Menu
  • The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Hitachi Predicts 4 TB Disk Drives by 2011

    October 22, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    The clever engineers at the former IBM disk drive business that is now known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies are pushing the technology barriers again, and said last week they have shrunk the read/write heads on a prototype disk drive enough that the company is predicting it can ship 4 TB disk drives by 2011 for the desktop market, and presumably for the server market soon thereafter.

    To boost the recording density of its disk designs, Hitachi’s San Jose Research Center in California and Central Research Laboratory in Japan figured out a way to reduce the size of the disk heads by a factor of two. The technology should allow Hitachi to create disk heads that are in the range of 30 nanometers to 50 nanometers in width. The future disk heads are based on a perpendicular recording technique originally invented by IBM. The new technique uses disks that have current perpendicular to the plane giant magnetoresistive (CPP-GMR) heads, which yield a recording density of between 500 gigabits per square inch to 1 terabit per square inch. That top-end number is four times the current data recording density of the most dense, 1 TB disk drives, which from Hitachi have an areal density of 148 gigabits per square inch. (It gets to 1 TB by having lots of platters.) Hitachi’s most dense disks weigh in at around 200 gigabits per square inch. These disks use a disk head technology called tunnel magnetoresistive (TMR), which has a 70 nanometer track width for the disk head and which starts to produce read and write errors on disk platters with data densities of more than 500 gigabits per square inch. So clearly, Hitachi had to come up with a new disk head to get more data stored on the disk.

    Hitachi says that disk recording heads with 50 nanometer track widths should come out of its factories in 2009, followed by heads with 30 nanometer track widths by 2011.

    GMR technology is a hot topic these days, since Albert Fert, of the Université Paris-Sud in France and Peter Grunberg of the Institute of Solid State Research in Germany won the Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering the GMR effect in 1988. GMR arranges layers of iron and chromium in the disk head in such a way that quantum effects allow a tiny change in a magnetic field (in the case of a disk drive head passing over a disk platter with magnetically encoded data) to cause a big change electrical resistance (and therefore a signal coming off the disk drive head and out to the disk controller) to allow very high data densities on that device. In 1997, IBM’s disk unit figured out how to commercialize GMR, and brought very dense disks to market, getting a substantial leads on rivals.

    RELATED STORIES

    Small Form Factor Disks Go Mainstream, the System i Has Gone Fishin’

    Hitachi Boosts Enterprise-Class Hard Drives to 1 Terabyte

    Mad Dog 21/21: Paved With Good Intentions

    Expect i5/OS V5R5 in 2007, Power6 for System i Maybe in 2007

    The Disk Drive at 50: Still Spinning



                         Post this story to del.icio.us
                   Post this story to Digg
        Post this story to Slashdot

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Tags: Tags: mtfh_rc, Volume 16, Number 41 -- October 22, 2007

    Sponsored by
    WorksRight Software

    Do you need area code information?
    Do you need ZIP Code information?
    Do you need ZIP+4 information?
    Do you need city name information?
    Do you need county information?
    Do you need a nearest dealer locator system?

    We can HELP! We have affordable AS/400 software and data to do all of the above. Whether you need a simple city name retrieval system or a sophisticated CASS postal coding system, we have it for you!

    The ZIP/CITY system is based on 5-digit ZIP Codes. You can retrieve city names, state names, county names, area codes, time zones, latitude, longitude, and more just by knowing the ZIP Code. We supply information on all the latest area code changes. A nearest dealer locator function is also included. ZIP/CITY includes software, data, monthly updates, and unlimited support. The cost is $495 per year.

    PER/ZIP4 is a sophisticated CASS certified postal coding system for assigning ZIP Codes, ZIP+4, carrier route, and delivery point codes. PER/ZIP4 also provides county names and FIPS codes. PER/ZIP4 can be used interactively, in batch, and with callable programs. PER/ZIP4 includes software, data, monthly updates, and unlimited support. The cost is $3,900 for the first year, and $1,950 for renewal.

    Just call us and we’ll arrange for 30 days FREE use of either ZIP/CITY or PER/ZIP4.

    WorksRight Software, Inc.
    Phone: 601-856-8337
    Fax: 601-856-9432
    Email: software@worksright.com
    Website: www.worksright.com

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Reader Feedback: More on Vendor Names and Changing System Names Talend Adds i5/OS Support to Open Source ETL Tool

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

TFH Volume: 16 Issue: 41

This Issue Sponsored By

    Table of Contents

    • Reader Feedback on AS/400s Are From Rochester, RS/6000s Are From Austin
    • IT Managers Do Really Well in Europe, Fair in North America
    • State of the System i: First-Hand Reports from Second-Hand Dealers
    • Green Computing Tops Gartner’s List of 10 Hottest Technologies
    • System i Sales Drop Again in Q3, IBM Says Little
    • Aldon Says SOA, Web 2.0 Apps and Compliance Drive ALM Sales
    • IBM Hit by Financial Services Slowdown in Q3
    • Hitachi Predicts 4 TB Disk Drives by 2011
    • Mad Dog 21/21: Symphony for the Devil
    • Oracle Planning Reorganization in Application Group?

    Content archive

    • The Four Hundred
    • Four Hundred Stuff
    • Four Hundred Guru

    Recent Posts

    • IBM i Has a Future ‘If Kept Up To Date,’ IDC Says
    • When You Need Us, We Are Ready To Do Grunt Work
    • Generative AI: Coming to an ERP Near You
    • Four Hundred Monitor, March 22
    • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 12
    • Unattended IBM i Operations Continue Upward Climb
    • VS Code Is The Full Stack IDE For IBM i
    • Domino Runs on IBM i 7.5, But HCL Still Working on Power10
    • Four Hundred Monitor, March 6
    • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 11

    Subscribe

    To get news from IT Jungle sent to your inbox every week, subscribe to our newsletter.

    Pages

    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Contributors
    • Four Hundred Monitor
    • IBM i PTF Guide
    • Media Kit
    • Subscribe

    Search

    Copyright © 2023 IT Jungle