Hi Pat:
You should know that I have benefited immensely from your
ADSL research. This board can only benefit from your
resourceful nature.
Anyway, since you are going to COMDEX may I suggest a few
areas that you can check out? Specifically, I've come to the
conclusion that the successful adoption of KM will depend to
a great degree on how successful the drive makers are in
improving the yields of their MR head disk drive production lines.
MR head disk drives clearly represent the next generation of
disk drives, offering as it does velocity-independence, relatively
precise signals (thus requiring fewer parts), and greater capacity
potential.
The mass production of MR disk drives are, however, plagued by poor yields, as detailed in the CMP article which I have attached. Still, IBM and Seagate are aggressively pushing their respective MR disk drive programs and the other disk drive makers are expected to match them eventually. It would be prudent then to track the yields of the MR disk drive programs of the different players to get a clearer picture of the window of opportunity that Ampex has to exploit in order to introduce KM. The problem is that manufacturing yields are proprietary information that is not easily retrieved. Perhaps, you can find a way to add to the pool of information here?
Regards,
Gus
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October 7, 1996
Issue: 704
Section: Hardware -- Components, Systems & Peripherals
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Access to technology critical to market success -- New MR heads fueling hard-drive race
By Kelly Spang
Waltham, Mass. - In a market where 80 percent of business is controlled by four companies, the challenge for the hard-drive industry is to improve yields on magneto-resistive (MR) heads to compete in the race for capacity and performance.
"MR head technology will be one of the critical pillars for disk drives as we close out the 1990s," said Mark Geenen, president of TrendFocus Inc., Palo Alto, Calif. "Existing technologies are reaching the end of their practical lives to maintain a 50 [percent] to 60 percent [annually compounded areal density increase]. Having access and the ability to use MR technology is becoming more critical."
By 1997, resellers can expect to see the four biggest players in the hard-drive industry-IBM Corp., Seagate Technology Inc., Western Digital Corp. and Quantum Corp.-implement MR heads in their drives, if they have not done so already.
The benefit of MR technology is that it allows increased data per disk, providing increased capacity and higher performance so hard-disk drives can keep pace with annually doubled areal density, the number of data bits that can be recorded per unit of media surface area.
MR heads use fewer components than other head technologies, ultimately resulting in lower costs of production. With fewer parts, industry officials agree, reliability inherently will increase along with a reduction in power consumption.
While costs of producing MR heads are coming down, it is still an imperfect technology and therefore carries a premium for drive manufacturers. MR head manufacturing is plagued with problems similar to semiconductor production, where at each step of the process product yields are lost.
Compared with production yields on the current technology of inductive thin film heads, which range between 75 percent and 80 percent, MR head yields are at best 65 percent, said Dennis Waid, president of Peripheral Research Corp., Santa Barbara, Calif.
IBM, Armonk, N.Y., is the most seasoned at using and producing MR heads, Waid said. The company made the transition in the early 1990s toward MR technology and, by 1994, IBM positioned itself to exclusively ship drives using MR heads. Though the company does not record annual numbers, David Walling, IBM's manager for sales support and OEM worldwide marketing, said IBM has shipped more than 100-million drives with MR heads.
Despite IBM's experience with MR production, the company can still only reach approximately 65 percent in yields, Waid said. Other companies, including Quantum, Milpitas, Calif., are faring much worse, with yields generally between 16 percent and 45 percent, Waid said.
By the first quarter of 1997, Waid said he expects the yields to improve to beyond 50 percent as the manufacturers address the various production problems associated with the technology. Waid estimated that half of all shipped hard-disk drives will have MR heads by 1998.
Positioning itself to reap future benefits from MR technology, Quantum is weighing heavily now on MR heads as a competitive advantage. Joe Cousins, manager of distribution marketing for the desktop storage group at Quantum, said the company's key strategy is to provide leading areal density at an attractive cost-per-Mbyte solution.
"Allowing us to do that is MR head [technology]," Cousins said. "By the end of the year, all of our products will have [MR] technology, except for the newest value-class products. We are betting heavily on the technology." Cousins said because there are fewer components, Quantum can offer drives with MR heads at an "extremely competitive price."
Michael Brown, Quantum's chief executive, said: "We believe MR [technology] on the desktop is an appropriate strategy and a significant competitive advantage for Quantum in the long run. MR offers the competitive areal density advantage with increased capacity without affecting performance."
However, with its Sirocco drive, a 1.7-Gbyte drive using MR heads, Quantum was not able to be price-competitive against Western Digital's Caviar 1.6-Gbyte drive. Quantum officials said because the Sirocco could not compete in price, the company decided not to ship the product in high volume.
Western Digital, Irvine, Calif., is taking a more conservative approach toward implementing MR heads. John Burger, Western Digital's vice president of marketing for the personal storage group, said MR technology will not be cost-effective until 1997, so the company is waiting to implement MR heads into its products.
Burger said there was "over optimism" in the early adoption of MR technology. Even once MR technology becomes cost-effective, Burger said it will co-exist with thin film heads at least for a couple of more years.
Seagate Technology, Scotts Valley, Calif., has been involved in MR head design and development since the late 1980s, said Ron Verdoorn, executive vice president and chief operating officer. The company is now using third-generation MR head designs, and Verdoorn said by June 1997 the majority of Seagate products will use MR head designs.
Copyright * 1996 CMP Media Inc. |
