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Aiming at the superparamagnetic limit

From...

By David Legard

SINGAPORE (IDG) -- Executives from the disk drive industry gathered here Wednesday for the Diskcon Asia 2001 conference to discuss the perennial issues facing this low-profile industry: the need to keep increasing storage capacity and read/write speeds, plus reducing end-user prices while turning a profit.

Diskcon, organized by the International Disk Drive and Materials Association (IDEMA), will examine the latest storage technology advances and propose a road map for their implementation, allowing areal densities to climb far beyond 200Gb per square inch, IDEMA said in a statement.

The conference will cover several detailed topics dealing with increasing storage density. These include:

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new GMR (giant magneto-resistive) materials for the pinned and anti-ferromagnetic film layers on the read head's surface to enhance sensitivity;

CPP (current-perpendicular-to-plane) read heads and TMR (tunnel MR) structures, designs that may permit very high areal densities;

new processing techniques for inductive write heads;

deep ultraviolet/e-beam lithography and ion beam etching to create fine line precision write head pole tips; and

design of heads and media for perpendicular recording.

In media development, experts will discuss the benefits of AFC (anti-ferromagnetic-coupled) exchange media as an approach to delay the effects of superparamagnetism. The superparamagnetic limit is a fundamental physical constraint beyond which conventional hard drives can no longer reliably store data, due to signal-to-noise effects.

The only way to overcome the superparamagnetic limit is with some revolutionary new storage mechanism, perhaps using holographic or quantum effects, experts believe.

The important role of electronics in achieving high recording densities, including new data channels and new coding techniques, will also be addressed, IDEMA said.

Diskcon takes place on Wednesday and Thursday.

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RELATED SITES:

International Disk Drive and Materials Association

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