Fujitsu Europe Limited
Latest Technology Milestone Establishes Pattern for Future Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Capacity Expansion
Fujitsu Announces Breakthrough Achievement for One Terabit/Inch² Using Patterned Media Technology
22 January, 2007 — Fujitsu Europe Limited today announced another prominent breakthrough in magnetic recording. Using patterned media technology, Fujitsu was able to achieve a one-dimensional array of nanohole pattern with an unprecedented 25 nanometer pitch. This dramatic new achievement was presented at the 10th Joint MMM/Intermag Conference on January 9, 2007 in Baltimore, MD / USA.
This revolutionary accomplishment came from the joint work of Yamagata Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Laboratories Limited and Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology (KAST). With this latest patterned media announcement, Fujitsu has successfully realized a nanohole pattern with 25 nanometer pitch, a process which will enable one Terabit/in2 recording on HDDs in the future.
Fujitsu first announced innovations with patterned media recording in June 2005. At that time, advancements were made with the introduction of a process to pre-pit aluminum media, resulting in nanoholes with an extremely dense and ordered structure. In addition, a technique called land/groove texturing allowed for the creation of discrete tracks in which the nanoholes could be formed. This progress in patterned media has enabled the development of high capacity hard disk drives, especially in smaller form factors.
During the MMM/Intermag conference, Fujitsu also revealed a new development involving perpendicular magnet recording (PMR) read/write operation on random patterned media. With this technology, the soft underlayer (SUL) is used as the PMR media, another important milestone. This progress in patterned media – recording closely follows the November 2006 Fujitsu announcement regarding the optical element being developed for thermal assisted recording, another promising - advancement for future capacity - increases. These accomplishments indicate that Fujitsu now possesses a variety of enabling technology options that allow for the engineering of hard disk drives with increased areal densities.
Growing demand for HDDs with high capacities, especially in small form factors, are being generated from both the enterprise and mobile areas. Manufacturers of database servers and NAS and SAN systems are seeking these models so that they can create products that feature greater amounts of storage space, but which require less power and generate less heat. Notebook and consumer electronic (CE) companies covet these hard disk drives so they can design the sleek, high-performance products that are so popular in the mass market. “These latest developments on patterned media technology reconfirm Fujitsu’s leadership in the hard drive industry,” said Georg Dietsch, Director Storage Products Group EMEA. “Combined with our recent announcement on thermal assisted recording and the now available PMR hard disk drives, we are set to meet the industry’s rising demand for compact-size, high-capacity HDDs.”
This work on nanohole patterned media is supported by the "Research Program on Development of Innovative Technology" of the Japan Science and Technology Agency.
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Fujitsu is a leading provider of customer-focused IT and communications solutions for the global marketplace. Pace-setting
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About Fujitsu Europe Limited
Operating in Europe/Middle East/Africa, Fujitsu Europe Limited is a market leading provider of document image scanners for
professional desktop, workgroup and high volume production environments; Enterprise SCSI, FCAL and SAS, and Mobile ATA and
SATA hard disk drives; high capacity external 2.5-inch drives; KVM devices including switches, CAT-5 extenders and pull-out
drawers; biometric authentication sensors as well as dot-matrix printers. Established in the United Kingdom in 1981, Fujitsu
Europe Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global electronics giant Fujitsu Limited and has its head office in the
UK as well as subsidiary offices in Germany, Italy and Spain.
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One gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes; accessible capacity will be less and actual capacity depends on the operating environment
and formatting.
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