Marty,
Some info on RDRT's GMR read below.
Carolyn
Read-Rite Corporation is the world's leading independent manufacturer of recording heads, head gimbal assemblies (HGAs) and head stack assemblies (HSAs) for disk drives and magnetoresistive heads for quarter-inch-cartridge tape drives. Magnetic recording heads "read" and "write" information to and from computer hard disks, thus making it possible to store and retrieve vast quantities of information rapidly.
In recent years, average disk-drive capacity has increased more than 60 percent per year, essentially doubling every 18 months. Read-Rite supplies approximately 25 percent of the world's disk-drive heads and maintains its leadership position by investing aggressively in research and development and by consistently making the capital investments necessary to ensure that Read-Rite manufacturing facilities are at the forefront of industry technology. The company has successfully ramped up production of magnetoresistive (MR heads) and is well-positioned to take advantage of the industry's rapid shift to this new technology. Read-Rite is also the worldwide volume leader among independent manufacturers of advanced inductive recording heads.
Giant MR, the technology most believe will ultimately replace MR -- much as MR is currently replacing advanced inductive technology, is a major focus of Read-Rite R&D efforts. The company's Giant MR technology includes "spin valve" and "perpendicular-to-the-plane Giant MR." Read-Rite was a 1996 co-recipient, along with Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, of Research and Development Magazine's R&D 100 Award for jointly developing a new ultra-high-density magnetic sensor that has the potential to increase significantly the storage capacity of computer hard disks.
Read-Rite is known as the high-volume, low-cost producer in this highly capital-intensive industry. Its customer base is the broadest of any supplier of magnetic recording heads and includes Western Digital, Quantum/Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics (MKE), Maxtor, Micropolis, Samsung, Iomega, Exabyte and Hewlett-Packard. The company competes on the basis of rapid design-in of custom-made heads and rapid scale-up of production to support aggressive customer ramps. |
