Zakrosian,
Er, thanks for the backhanded compliment considering that Aikman and the Cowboys won't even make the playoffs this year. Actually, the analogy you should have used is the college Doug Flutie and his Hail Mary pass because this is what Headway amounts to for APM, in my opinion. I don't think you'll complain about the results, tho, if it works out this way.
The rule of thumb is overcapacity leads to consolidation. Take a look at the platter industry which has been at overcapacity for over a year now. Stormedia was operating at 30% of capacity and 20% of that reduced revenues went up in smoke when the Singaporean government decided to pull the plug on Micropolis to help reduce the developing overcapacity in the high-end segment. What did Stormedia do? It rounded up WDC and Samsung as customers with some cushy deals (it's supply agreement with SEG used to contain a cap on gross margins!) and acquired a smaller, niche platter player called Akashic Memories (see news archive). Interesting factoid: Herb Greenberg of the San Francisco Chronicle had reported a rumor that Samsung was on the verge of acquiring STMD or Akashic so it's interesting that STMD ended up buying Akashic with Samsung on board as a major customer. I'm waiting for the deal to close to take a look at the financing if they file the details. If I remember correctly, STMD was bleeding cash badly when it did this.
Anyway, here are some background articles....
....Headway was founded in 1994 by Asahi Glass, Hewlett-Packard Co., and Komag Inc. It makes a proprietary version of MR heads called dual-striped MR that it sees as a steppingstone to future iterations of MR-head technology...
Headway To Raise $54M
Electronic Buyers News, March 17, 1997
techweb.com
...That loyalty is for an MR-head technology called dual-stripe. Headway claims that two stripes make its heads better-suited to very high density than conventional MR heads. Underscoring that contention, MacKay noted that Seagate Technology Inc. is using dual-stripe MR (DSMR) heads in its Cheetah drive, which is the highest-capacity drive from an independent and is also the first to spin disks at 10,000 rpm....
....Capacity increases are a necessity in the disk-drive industry. Headway had revenues of $25.2 million last year, but 1997 revenues will soar past $60 million, MacKay said. In 1998, he predicts revenues will "be in excess of $250 million...."
Recapitalizing gives vendor new head of steam
Electronic Engineering Times, March 24, 1997
techweb.com
Using the roadmap from IBM....
Anistropic MR = AMR or conventional MR takes you all the way up to 5.0 Gbits/in2
Giant MR = GMR or spin valve GMR takes you from around 3.0 Gbits/in2 to 10 Gbits/in2 (scheduled for 2001) and beyond (don't ask).
Note: Experts, this is your cue to chime in and amplify and clarify.
DSMR is a proprietary Headway design that contains an inductive element to write the magnetic bits -- like all MR designs so far -- and TWO (2) AMR or GMR elements or sensors. That's right, you can use this design with AMR sensors OR GMR/spin valve sensors.
For example, you can go to IBM's patent server at...
patent.womplex.ibm.com
... and do an advanced search for "Speriosu" and you will generate a list of 13 of Speriosu's patent, which include this one...
5287238 - Dual spin valve magnetoresistive sensor
Here's the dual AMR version presented at the UCSD last 10/16/97.
"5 Gigabits Per Square Inch Recording Demonstration with
Conventional AMR Magnetoresistive Heads and Thin Film Disks"
www-physics.ucsd.edu
ABSTRACT. Magnetic recording at 5Gb/in2 and 10MB/s have been demonstrated using narrow track dual-element heads with conventional AMR sensors and low noise Co alloy thin film disks....
There are other dual-stripe designs out there, but Headway via Seagate has the distinctive advantage of being the only one that's field-proven.
Lastly, somebody's asleep at the wheel at IDEMA but the Nov/Dec issue of INSIGHT, a disk drive industry trade publication, has been out for several weeks. There are informative articles on GMR, Cheetahs, Terastor, etc in this issue.
idema.org
Gus |
