Fujitsu Seizes Technology Leadership Position with the Introduction of Nineteen New Hard Drives
Becomes First and Only Supplier to Announce Giant Magneto-Resistive Heads on Entire Family of Enterprise, Mobile, and Desktop Products
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 26, 1998-- Fujitsu Computer Products of America, the world's fastest growing major hard drive company, today announced the introduction of nineteen new hard drive models, becoming the hard drive industry's first supplier to announce Giant Magneto-Resistive (GMR) heads across a complete family of enterprise, mobile, and desktop products.
Fujitsu's advanced GMR head technology offers extensive benefits in the form of performance, reliability, design efficiency and cost. A major engineering achievement, GMR heads provide a dramatic improvement in signal-to-noise ratio over previous generations of MR heads, allowing them to read more closely-packed magnetic data bits, which enables manufacturers to store more data on smaller disks or fewer disks. As a result, GMR enables Fujitsu to offer industry-leading capacity points of up to 36.4 GB on 3-inch diameter media with the same number of disks as previous generation 18 GB products. As a vertically integrated manufacturer, Fujitsu has designed and manufactured its own GMR heads and the key component technology required to properly support them, thereby surpassing competition with an unprecedented degree of quality and swift time-to-market.
''With this product introduction, we believe that Fujitsu has secured its role as a world class technology leader in the enterprise, mobile, and desktop hard drive market segments, and feel that we have properly positioned ourselves to continue our impressive success in the months ahead,'' commented Larry Sanders, President and CEO, Fujitsu Computer Products of America. ''By designing and manufacturing our own GMR heads, Fujitsu has been able to bring our new generation of products to market faster than our competitors, and by developing our own component technology, we've been able to deliver the kind of outstanding reliability and product integrity that our customers deserve.''
New Enterprise Drives Harness the Power of GMR to Set the
Standard for High Performance
With this product launch, Fujitsu introduces six new enterprise hard drives, at capacity points of 9.1 Gigabytes (GB), 18.2 GB, and 36.4 GB, at speeds of 7,200 and 10,000 RPM. The FC-AL or Fibre channel arbitrated loop interface will be offered on 10,000 RPM drives, and Ultra2 SCSI is available on both 7,200 and 10,000 RPM models. Fujitsu's advanced GMR head technology enables the 10,000 RPM and 36.4 GB 7200 RPM drives to use 3-inch diameter media in an efficient design that maximizes performance while reducing the number of heads and disks, improving response time, and keeping idle power consumption as well as acoustic noise to a minimum. All of the new enterprise drives boast industry-leading performance on crucial parameters such as seek time, data transfer rate, and IOPS (input/output operations per second). In addition, the new drives incorporate important reliability features, such as drive thermal sensor, improvements in key shock and vibration specifications, and decreased acoustic levels.
At 45 Megabytes (MB) per second, the peak internal transfer rate on Fujitsu's new 10,000 RPM drives is designed to be the fastest in the industry. Average seek time has been reduced to as low as 5 milliseconds. The drives also feature a high performance dual processor design, which greatly improves response time in high-load applications. Cache memory for all models has been increased to 2 MB, 4 times larger than Fujitsu's previous generation of hard drive products.
Evaluation units of Fujitsu's new enterprise drives will be available for OEM customers starting in late November 1998. In the first calendar quarter of 1999, Fujitsu should become the first supplier to offer GMR-enabled enterprise drives to the distribution channel.
Mobile Drives Take the Lead on Reliability and Ruggedness
Fujitsu's new generation of storage products includes three new 2.5-inch mobile hard drives in the ATA-4 interface at 4,200 RPM spindle speed. In the standard 12.5 mm profile the drive is available with a formatted capacity of 6.49 GB, and in the slim 9.5mm profile, the drives are available in formatted capacities of 2.16 GB and 4.32 GB. With these new products, Fujitsu sets a new standard for reliability in mobile computing by offering a high shock resistance rating, at 125G force operating and 600G force non-operating shock tolerance levels.
While important to all computer systems, shock resistance is absolutely critical to mobile applications. Therefore, Fujitsu's newest mobile hard drives have been reinforced with a number of unique engineering modifications designed by Fujitsu to improve ruggedness and prevent sustainable damage caused from shock. Repeatable run-out compensation helps to correct ''disk shift'' by performing diagnostics each time the hard drive starts up and electronically compensating for errant mechanical movement. To secure the head in place when not in operation, Fujitsu has also implemented a design enhancement to minimize the head slap damage. Proprietary design upgrades to the head size and shape further fortify the drives. Only Fujitsu hard drives offer this combination of design enhancements and proprietary technologies.
The new Mobile series of storage products also offer industry-leading WinBench'98 performance, with the fastest available internal transfer rate of 7.7-13.6 MB per second, and a 512KB write and read-ahead cache buffer that enables highly efficient processing and performance. The Power Save mode on the drives offers lower power consumption to help extend battery life without sacrificing high performance. Fujitsu's new mobile drives are available now.
Desktop Drives Designed for Performance and High Capacity
Nine new desktop disk drives are included in Fujitsu's next generation of storage products, leading the industry with areal densities as high as 3.6 Gb/in2. The 5400 RPM series feature 4.3GB per platter and the 7200 RPM drives provide 4.55 GB per platter. With a design optimized for performance and reliability, the new desktop drives provide nine capacity points, ranging from 4.3 to 18.2 GB on one to four platters. The hardware supports UDMA 66 and is backward compatible with UDMA 33.
The 5400 RPM series, with six capacity points (4.3, 6.4, 8.4, 10.8, 12.9, 17.3 GB) is designed to bring sweet spot capacities to consumer and commercial PC users. This series offers the highest media transfer rate of any 5400 RPM drive -- up to 26.1 MB/sec. A 512 KB buffer and average seek time of 9.5 ms make this drive perform with the best of its class. The 5400 RPM series will sample to OEMs in November 1998 with volume availability in February 1999.
The 7200 RPM desktop series is designed for power users, who want SCSI performance with ATA ease of use. This series includes the capacity points 9.1, 13.7, and 18.2 GB using 2, 3, and 4 platters respectively. The average seek time is 9.0 ms and the media transfer rate is up to 34.6 MB/sec. The 7200 RPM series supports UDMA 66 which doubles the interface transfer rate from 33 MB/sec to 66 MB/sec. This will firmly establish Fujitsu's leadership position in the desktop drive performance segment.
The new drives feature an integrated chip that combines the hard disk controller and microprocessor. This improves performance by reducing command overhead and improves reliability by lowering the component count. The integrated chip boasts 320 bit on-the-fly error correction capability, resulting in improved data integrity. The entire desktop family is rated at 500,000 hours Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF), the highest rating of any desktop product. All Fujitsu Computer Products of America desktop drives are backed by a three year warranty and the No Excuses(R) guarantee.
Fujitsu's Commitment to its Customers
Fujitsu products are designed to provide customers with the highest level of performance, reliability and convenience. Most hard drive products sold by Fujitsu Computer Products are covered by its No Excuses(R) limited warranty, a policy unmatched by any other manufacturer in the hard drive industry.
In the unlikely event of an irresolvable hardware problem during the warranty period, the No Excuses limited warranty provides customers an advance replacement unit within two business days. As a further supplement to No Excuses support, Fujitsu Computer Products of America has developed an extensive, user-friendly FAQ Website, and extended its technical support telephone hours to include weekday evenings until 9:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. PST.
About Fujitsu Limited
Fujitsu Limited is a leading provider of information technology products and solutions for the global marketplace. Founded in Japan in 1935 as a telephone equipment maker, the Fujitsu Group had consolidated revenues of $37.7 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 1998. With over 500 group companies, including Amdahl and ICL, Fujitsu is one of the world's largest suppliers of computers and information systems solutions, telecommunications and semiconductor products, software and services. The Fujitsu Group has over 180,000 employees worldwide and operations in more than 100 countries. Home page: fujitsu.com.
About Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc.
Fujitsu Computer Products of America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited. Benefiting from Fujitsu Ltd.'s $3 billion annual investment in research and development, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. provides innovative solutions for the U.S. marketplace. Current product offerings include: high performance hard disk drives, tape drives, magneto-optical drives, high performance scanners and printers. The company of approximately 700 encompasses research and development operations in Longmont, Colo.; computer peripheral repair in Hillsboro, Ore.; engineering and marketing in San Jose, Calif.; and sales operations throughout the United States. Fujitsu Computer Products of America is based in San Jose, Calif. and is located at 2904 Orchard Parkway, San Jose, Calif. 95134.
For more information about Fujitsu products and services, use our Internet Web site at fcpa.com. The company can be reached by phone at 800/626-4686 or 408/432-6333.
Note to Editors: The 2 in the term ''Gb/in2'' should be written as superscript (inches-squared).
Fujitsu and the Fujitsu logo are registered trademarks of Fujitsu Limited. No Excuses and the No Excuses logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. Certain restrictions apply to the No Excuses limited warranty. Valid in the U.S. and for U.S. residents only. Call 800/626-4686 for full details. Fujitsu Computer Products of America reserves the right to modify at any time without prior notice, any of its procedures for obtaining warranty or post-warranty service as set forth in this document, including the addition and deletion of specific products covered under this program.
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Contact:
Fujitsu Computer Products of America
Jennifer Jennings, 408/894-3945
jjenning@fcpa.fujitsu.com
or
Shafer Public Relations
Rebecca West or Caprice Fimbres, 800/503-1177
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