August 23, 2006 9:22 AM PDT
A divide over the future of hard drives
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By contrast, the patterned media group wants to keep the current grains. It proposes, instead, reducing the number of grains in each bit from 100 to one, and then isolating the bits from each other to reduce cross-talk and the risk of data corruption, Best said. Initially, the grains in the first patterned media drives would be larger than the grains in today's drives, but the overall size of the bit would be smaller.
"With this, you can get a factor of 100 in increase in density. Of course, you have to scale everything else, so it will take time. But the problem of the temperature of the room reversing magnetization goes away," Best said.
So how do you create a pattern? A master pattern could be drawn with e-beam lithography. That pattern could then be transferred to a mold, which would then be used to stamp out the pattern on hard drive platters though imprint lithography.
Adopting e-beam and imprint lithography into mass manufacturing won't be easy. In fact, patterned media hard drives could easily become the first widescale application for both, Best said.
E-beam, which creates a pattern by firing electrons, was invented years ago to replace traditional lithography in chipmaking, but it never did. Imprint lithography, which makes an impression like that on a signet ring, was only developed in the last few years.
However, lithography of any kind is expensive, particularly when compared to the film-coating processes used today. "We don't have to personalize each bit by patterning it lithographically," Kryder noted, referring to the heat-assisted technique.
Both camps have published papers and lab results, but no one is close to having manufacturing samples. Hitachi, for instance, has created prototype components, but not complete patterned media drives.
Ultimately, the decision could turn on which technology looks easier to bring to mass manufacturing. This year, around 450 million to 460 million drives will leave factories, according to data from Disk/Trend.
"You've got to figure out how to do this, not just in a lab demonstration, but by producing them in the hundreds of millions," said Porter of Disk/Trend. "The good news is that you have people working in both of these camps, and maybe others. There's nano-this and nano-that."
No matter which goes first, the end is not near. Hard drive makers are even examining new materials that could take the grain size below 8 nanometers, although the current candidates are corrosive.
"We can see 50 to 100 terabits being possible," Kryder said. "We are three orders of magnitude from any truly fundamental limits."
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9 comments
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Static memory devices have a long way to go to catch up with the advantages of hard disks at the moment.
And don't forget that HDs already have built in redundancy in the way of spare sectors per track, spare tracks to replace faulty ones, plus the ability to reformat and ignore bad areas. Add this to the cost per Gb and they're still way ahead in my book.
Of coure thay're far more susceptible to damage in motion etc, so I would expect to see most personal gadgets to go static mem. Not in my PC just yet though.
In other words ... how do you RAID a laptop harddrive today...? You can't (easily)!
Heck, if you want a "plan b" have the user carry a 2gb USB stick with a stripped down WINXP install. Then make sure the system can boot USB. At least on the road the laptop wouldn't be useless because of a hard drive failure.
Jake
which is the only HD I've ever had fail on me.
Think I'll wait for it to prove itself mature first...
If this is the case, wouldn't liquid cooled type cases may be needed or helpful?
If this is the case, wouldn't liquid cooled type cases be needed or helpful?
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