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Technology Stocks : Applied Magnetics Corp -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Pick who wrote (11532)	3/22/1998 3:26:00 PM
From: appro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12298

This thread needs a laugh: Here is a summary of my APM trading history from last May through October. exchange2000.com

To: Steve Pick who wrote (11532)	3/22/1998 6:19:00 PM
From: Stitch	Respond to of 12298

Steve, This correlates with what I have heard. They have pilot lines in Goleta which are used for development of the processes to make any new product. MR heads use separate read and write elements. The read element is MR. IBM's head design (which they call "merged head") consists of a thin film inductive write element and a read element. The read element consists of an MR sensor between two magnetic shields. The magnetic shields greatly reduce unwanted magnetic fields coming from the disk; the MR (or GMR for that matter) sensor essentially "sees" only the magnetic field from the recorded data bit to be read. In a merged head the second magnetic shield also functions as one pole of the inductive write head. The advantage of separate read and write elements is both elements can be individually optimized. A merged head has additional advantages. This head is less expensive to produce, because it requires fewer process steps; and, it performs better in a drive, because the distance between the read and write elements is less. The inductive write head records bits of information by magnetizing tiny regions along concentric tracks. During reading, the presence of a magnetic transition, or flux reversal between bits, causes the magnetic orientation in the MR or GMR sensor to change. This in turn, causes the resistance of this sensor to change. The sensor's output voltage or signal is the product of this resistance change and the read bias current. This signal is amplified by low-noise electronics and sent to the HDD's data detection electronics. HDD designers now have access to MR and GMR sensors, which are both very thin. If 250,000 of these sensors, excluding leads, were stacked on top of each other, the stack would be less than one inch high. The biggest functional difference between MR and GMR sensors is sensitivity, measured by percent change in resistance. In an MR sensor a resistance change is caused by an intrinsic property of the sensing layer. In a GMR sensor, however, a resistance change is caused by the quantum nature of electrons. The sensitivity of GMR sensors is more than twice the sensitivity of MR sensors. I suspect that what you have heard is that AMC (APM) is still struggling with the MR element design and production. Two weeks away? Who knows!? I had heard that they planned to have qualifying quantities to a customer by the end of this month, so the targets correlate with what you have heard. Best, Stitch