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Technology Stocks : Read-Rite -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stitch who wrote (4773)	5/21/1999 12:14:00 PM
From: Renee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5058

05/20/99 Read Rite Corporation (RDRT $7.50,1-S,Tgt $16.00) John C. Dean --OPINION------------------------------------------------------------------- Read-Rite and HMT Technology announced this week (on 5/17/99) that they had achieved a breakthrough in GMR recording technology, with the design and fabrication of GMR heads that achieved an areal density of 20.9 gigabits per square inch. The HMT media used in the demo had a Mrt of 0.4 memu and coercivity of 2500, both values well within mass production capabilities of HMT's current sputter equipment base--the media were produced on existing manufacturing equipment. The integrated read and write pico heads utilize an innovative sensor structure incorporating new materials and deposition techniques. The heads were manufactured at Read-Rite's GMR production facility in Fremont, California. The areal density achieved on the integrated read and write pico head equates to over 29GB/platter, which is over four times the per disk capacity of today's commercially available drives. This achievement is an indication of 1) the close working relationship between RDRT and HMT, 2) the continual push to increase areal density and advance technology, and 3) the fruit-bearing, dedicated R&D efforts of the merchant suppliers. This announcement comes on the heels of an announcement by IBM made last week at its analyst meeting in New York--IBM achieved 20 gigabits per square inch. Technical Details: The areal density of 20.9 gigabits per square inch was achieved with linear densities of over 480,000 bits per inch and track densities of over 43,500 tracks per inch. The on-track error rate was less than one error in over a billion bits read with over 16% off-track capability. The data rate used for the demonstration was 175 megabits per second and the sensitivity of the heads was 5.1 millivolts per micron.