Brian:
I found it interesting that the LAN Times article is a virtual rehash of the Terastor press release as well as the information available on the Terastor web site except for this part:
"...At the same time, the company claims, its drives will roughly maintain the 10-millisecond access speed of today's hard disks...."
A Magneto-optical device achieving speed-parity with disk drives is very significant. The fact that Terastor CHOSE NOT TO highlight this fact in the press release and on their web site suggests to me that the writer of this piece made a factual mistake or that the source of this information is engaging in that time-honored practice of hyping something that is not practicable yet. If grabbing mind share is part of the goal, that's one way to do it. If a private placement or as someone suggested an IPO is in the works, then that is one way to generate a lot of buzz. This strikes me like a trial balloon being carefully floated in one trade magazine which can easily be denied later on.
Why am I skeptical? Well, Digital practically gave away their storage biz to Quantum, including the 26 Near Field recording patents being used by Terastor. IBM announced some breakthrough in Near Field Recording in August 95 but in 1996 they chose to spend $1.32 billion to expand their MR disk drive capacity. Even Quantum which owns part of Terastor is spending tons of money to improve their sorry-assed MR head recording biz. It should be noted, though, that ATT and IBM have achieved significant milestones in optical recording. ATT, for example, achieved 45 Gbits/in2 (or roughy 63 Gbytes/platter in 93 or 94, under lab conditions, using a variation of optical recording using fiber optics. I am not up to speed on where IBM is with their Holographic storage program.
It's a developing story, though, that bears watching. |
