Tech
GMR technology was expected and quantum is aware of it. See the last paragraph.
From EETimes Oct, 1997:
In heads, a number of moves will keep capacity on an upward spiral. Foremost is a shift to giant magnetoresistive heads, which could come as soon as next year. If GMR heads indeed debut then, it would make an extremely short timetable. MR heads have been used for a few years, but they became the norm only in the past year. By the end of next year, MR heads will make up nearly 100 percent of head shipments.
Making that shift took years. But designers believe that the change between MR and GMR will go much more smoothly than the fitful change from thin-film inductive heads to MR technology.
"The MR element goes up to about 5 Gbits/inch2, then, and I hate to predict the end of a technology; it will be difficult to go further," said Bob Scranton, vice president of technology at IBM's Storage Systems Division (San Jose). "Though it won't be easy for head people to make them, for the most part the things you need to do to integrate GMR are similar to what we've done with MR heads. I don't foresee quite the shock we saw in the giant transition from inductive heads to MR."
For head manufacturers, getting to the next generation is not expected to be easy. Read-Rite Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.), the leading independent supplier of heads, is boosting its R&D effort in an attempt to catch up with captive suppliers like IBM, Seagate and Quantum.
Dale |
