“One point twenty-one gigawatts?!” One would expect a similar reaction from “Doc” Emmett Brown of Back To The Future fame if he heard of tech giant Hitachi’s latest plan: to release a one terabyte drive by year’s end. A group of its employees are testing the technology this minute, according to the Japan-based company.
The technology is known as “perpendicular recording” because it stands the magnetic bits that hold the information on end (perpendicular to the board) rather than allowing them to lie flat. The innovation, which was formerly not a cost-effective way to increase storage space, should be mainstream by 2007, according to analysts. TechNewsWorld reports:
Hitachi plans to introduce its new drives into consumer products with a 2.5-inch platter. The disks are expected to have a capacity of 120 gigabits per inch, although the company said it has successfully demonstrated perpendicular recording inside drives with areal densities of 230 Gbits per square inch.
Buttress said companies can use the new technology’s consumer products rollout to make sure the kinks are out of their manufacturing processes. “If you stumble you could lose market share, maybe permanently,” he said. “Companies want to make sure they have their process yields up to where they want them.”
Of course, the real issue is not how much can be stored, but what can be done with all this storage, and that is still up in the air. “The question is, do we need 60 gigabytes on our cell phone? Well, it depends. We don’t know the answer because we don’t know where the market is going,” Buttress said. “It’s not just that you have to be able to do it, but do it reliably. Somebody’s got to come up with a reliable product that people want — or need.”
Seagate and Toshiba also plan to implement perpendicular recording technology in consumer releases this year.
Nathan Novak at 5:44 pm
