General Competition (April 1992)

Ultra-High Density Magnetic Recording Heads

Sponsor: National Storage Industry Consortium (NSIC)

• Project Performance Period: 8/1/1992 - 7/31/1997
• Total project (est.): $11,780,359.00
• Requested ATP funds: $5,534,457.00

Magnetic storage technology -- recording data as a pattern of magnetic domains on a recording surface -- is one of the key technologies driving the explosive growth of the computer industry. The best commercial disk drives today can store an amazing 100 million "bits" of information per square inch. But memory-hungry applications, such as graphic and video images, and visually-oriented user interfaces, continue to demand more and more memory. The National Storage Industry Consortium proposes to develop the underlying technology for radically new magnetic storage based on the recently discovered giant magnetoresistive effect. Their target is a data recording head capable of a recording density of 10 gigabits per square inch -- sufficient to record the text of a fair-sized encyclopedia on a square inch of disk media. Success would give the U.S. recording industry an important lead in a world market worth $50 billion per year. Members of the consortium working on the project will include Applied Magnetics Corporation, Carnegie Mellon University, Digital Equipment Company, Eastman Kodak Company, George Washington University, Hewlett-Packard Corporation, IBM, Quantum Corporation, Storage Technology Corporation, the University of Alabama, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Minnesota, and Washington University.

For project information:

John L. Simonds, (619) 621-2550
jsimonds@ucsd.edu

Active Project Participants

• Applied Magnetics Corporation (Goleta, CA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Carnegie Mellon University, ECE Department (Pittsburgh, PA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Eastman Kodak Company (Rochester, NY)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• George Washington University, Dept. of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (Washington, DC)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (formerly IBM Corporation, Almaden Research (San Jose, CA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Maxtor (formerly Quantum Corporation) (Shrewsbury, MA)
  [New Member since original JV was formed]
  
• Maxtor (formerly Storage Technology Corporation) (Shrewsbury, MA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Read-Rite Corporation (Fremont, CA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Seagate Technology (Minneapolis, MN)
  [New Member since original JV was formed]
  
• Stanford University, Department of Materials Science and Engineering (Stanford, CA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Center for Materials Information Technology (Tuscaloosa, AL)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• University of California at San Diego, Center for Magnetic Recording (La Jolla, CA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• University of Minnesota, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Minneapolis, MN)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Washington University, Department of Electrical Engineering (St. Louis, MO)
  [Original, Active Member]
  

ATP Project Manager

Purabi Mazumdar, (301) 975-4891
purabi.mazumdar@nist.gov