IBM Unveils Powerful Disk Drive,
Confirms Plans to Join Two Units
November 10, 1997
By RAJU NARISETTI
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
International Business Machines Corp. is unveiling a personal-computer
disk drive that uses a new technique to store up to eight times more
information than currently available in an average desktop computer.
Separately, IBM confirmed that it is combining its AS/400 minicomputer
division and RS/6000 midsize-computer unit to cut costs.
IBM's new 16.8-gigabyte drive comes just two weeks after rival Quantum
Corp. unveiled its Bigfoot hard disk drive, which, at 12 gigabytes, was touted as the industry leader. However, IBM's product is a
3.5-inch-diameter drive while Quantum's new drive is 5.25 inches across.
Consumer appetite for storage capacity has been growing rapidly as PC
users load more powerful software, with multimedia capabilities, and store pages from the Internet. As a result, disk-drive manufacturers have been trying to leapfrog each other. IBM's previous best PC disk drive was an 8.4-gigabyte model released just four months ago.
IBM's new 16.8-gigabyte drive, which the company will display next week in Las Vegas at the Comdex computer trade show, can hold up to eight hours of full-motion video. By contrast, the average hard drive capacity last year was 1.2 gigabytes, up from an average of just 200 megabytes in 1993.
IBM said it will use the drives, dubbed Deskstar, in its own computers and also sell them to other PC makers. IBM said about 60 customers, such as Dell Computer Corp. and Gateway 2000 Inc., are evaluating the drives.
IBM set the list price for a 16.8-gigabyte drive at $895. Last month,
Quantum, Milpitas, Calif., said the list price for its 12-gigabyte Bigfoot drive was $399.
IBM's powerful drive is based on a new technology called giant
magneto-resistive heads, which are devices no bigger than the head of a pin that "write" information to the magnetic disk and later read it back. IBM also invented the precursor magneto-resistive technology, which allowed more data to be crammed onto hard drives than older techniques.
The new disk uses the giant magneto-resistive effect, a discovery in
magnetism made in 1988. Three years ago, IBM researchers at the
company's Almaden Research Center and its Storage Systems Division,
both in San Jose, Calif., said they had developed a prototype giant
magneto-resistive disk head.
The company said its new Deskstar stores 2.7 billion bits of computer data per square inch of disk, up from 1.7 billion bits in its 8.4-gigabyte model. In addition to selling drives, IBM also plans to sell the giant magneto-resistive heads to other disk-drive manufacturers.
Separately, IBM confirmed that it is combining two of its large computer hardware divisions, both of which have seen declines in sales. IBM had consolidated manufacturing of its RS/6000 line of scientific and business computers, moving it from Austin, Texas, to the AS/400 midrange computer facility in Rochester, Minn. Now, other aspects of the two lines will be merged, though the products will keep separate brand identities.
IBM is placing responsibility for marketing both lines under William Zeitler, previously the general manager of the AS/400 division, while consolidating all product-development work under a newly appointed general manager, John Kelly. Mark Bregman, the previous general manager of the RS/6000 division, has been asked to lead a project evaluating new business opportunities at IBM's headquarters in Armonk, N.Y.
The combined divisions employ about 11,000. IBM has offered a voluntary job buyout program to many employees of the operation and has indicated internally that it will decide on the need for any involuntary layoffs by early December. The moves are part of a companywide cost-cutting drive IBM disclosed last month. |
