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To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (10821)	10/18/2003 2:41:13 AM
From: Sam Citron	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11057

Maxtor demos 175-Gbyte platter By Rick Merritt, EE Times October 13, 2003 (10:45 p.m. EST) URL: eetimes.com SAN MATEO, Calif. — MMC Technology Inc., the media subsidiary of hard drive maker Maxtor Corp., announced Monday (Oct. 13) a prototype 175-Gbyte disk for perpendicular recording. The move comes in the wake of the annual Diskcon conference where Western Digital and Seagate Technology reported their progress on components for perpendicular recording that is expected to be built into drives starting in 2005. Gunn Choe, director of magnetic R&D at MMC Technology said the Maxtor media sported characteristics superior to media shown by competitors such as Read-Rite Corp, now a subsidiary of Western Digital. For instance, the new Maxtor media can employ a magnetic soft underlayer (SUL) less than 100nm thick compared to a SUL of 200-400nm from Read-Rite. In addition spacing between the SUL and the recording layer can be less than 10nm in the Maxtor media, improving in signal to noise ratio and bit error rates. And the Maxtor platter had individual magnetic regions, called grains, just 6nm in diameter compared to 8nm-diameter grains used in current longitudinal media. That shrink helps drive makers pack more data on each platter. "We have developed a very unique structure," Choe said. "The next step for us is to improve our manufacturing yields and fine tune our media signal-to-noise ratio," he added. The Maxtor media was demonstrated using shielded pole current-in-plane heads from two unnamed vendors. The media was fabricated in a single pass on existing sputtering machines. Several drive makers predict perpendicular recording will replace the current longitudinal method starting in notebook and server drives in the second half of 2005. However, others have predicted a new class of so-called patterned media could arrive first to extend the life of today's longitudinal recording. "Patterned media would certainly reduce the burden on the head industry, but the process faces many issues," said Choe. "I doubt people will find a robust manufacturing process for patterned media in the near future," he added.

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (10821)	10/18/2003 1:01:35 PM
From: Sam Citron	Respond to of 11057

OT The only reason the Japanese companies dominate mobile drives is that the customers are captive divisions. Message 19288579 Take It With You Overview Cornice Inc. was formed in August 2000 by Kevin Magenis, former vice president of engineering at Maxtor, who is now Cornice's president and CEO, and Curt Bruner, formerly the chief electronics architect at Quantum and Intersect, who is now EVP and CTO of Cornice. Cornice is an innovator in small, compact, low-cost, high-capacity storage that enables a new generation of pocket-able consumer electronic devices for the world's leading brand-name manufacturers. The Cornice Storage Element (SE) is durable, integrated, personal storage that brings new levels of affordability and content capacity to these devices. Magenis and Bruner assembled a team of world-class innovative engineers who had worked together at such HDD leaders as Maxtor, Quantum, Seagate, and Connor Peripherals, and were frustrated by the HDD industry's resistance to disruptive ingenuity, and were eager to strike off in a new and exciting direction. Team members deliberately chose the consumer electronics industry to implement their vision because the CE industry, less hamstrung by legacy concepts, is more open to new ideas. The core Cornice engineering team collectively holds well in excess of 100 patents and, with more than 500 years of collective experience, was responsible for the development and volume delivery of world-leading products from Maxtor, Quantum, Hewlett-Packard, Seagate, Western Digital, and Conner Peripherals. To keep manufacturing costs down, assure best-of-breed quality, and give customers confidence the Cornice SE would be available in required volumes, Cornice teamed up with SAE, an ultra-high-volume subassembly manufacturer and subsidiary of TDK. Simultaneously Cornice assembled an All-Star Team of the best and brightest component suppliers in motors, heads and suspensions and include TI and SAE. Then Cornice, SAE and their partners developed a streamlined supply chain and assembly system that enables fast and copious manufacture of Cornice SEs... corniceco.com corniceco.com