IBM Makes Disk-Drive Storage Breakthrough - NYT
NEW YORK (Reuters) - IBM plans to announce today that it has broken the magnetic disk-drive storage barrier of 10 billion bits of data a square inch, the New York Times reported.
The new technology would first appear in products in 2001, the newspaper reported IBM as saying.
The new technology will first be used in 2.5 inch, non- removable disk drives intended for use in portable computers, it said.
At that size, a single platter disk drive will be able to hold 6.5 gigabytes of data, making possible ultraslim laptop computers that will nevertheless have vast storage capacity, it said. A 3.5-inch platter will hold 12 to 13 gigabytes.
The newspaper noted that IBM passed the one billion bit level in April 1996 and also used that advance in the unremovable disk drives for portable computers.
A gigabyte is a billion bits, equivalent to 62,500 double spaced, typewritten pages, which it said would be 21 feet tall if stacked. At the new record density of 11.6 billion bits or gigabits, per square inch equivalent to 1.8 billion bits per square centimetre, every square inch of disk space could hold 1, 450 average-sized novels or more than 725,000 pages of double- spaced typewritten pages. That would make a stack taller than an 18-story building, it said.
Does this mean a disk drive for the PalmPilot is in the future? |
