Disk drive industry appoints roadmap reading committee

HAMR or BPM?

The ASTC states in its FAQ that "The first priority for the alliance will be to develop data and industry direction on which of the two technologies (HAMR or BPM ) may be implemented first in mass production."

It has this to say about HAMR and BPM technologies:

Both technologies – HAMR and BPM – hold promise for driving areal density far beyond about a terabit per square inch, and ultimately, we expect the industry to use both techniques in tandem to drive areal density beyond 10 Tbits/in². HAMR and BPM are complementary technologies. A key technical challenge in scaling to higher areal density is the thermal stability of the media.

There are two approaches to pushing the thermal limits of the media to higher areal density. One direction is to enable scaling to smaller data bits without having to reduce the physical grains size in the magnetic media. The other is to increase the magnetic stiffness of the media materials.

BPM technology addresses the first pathway through intentional patterning of the bits into ‘islands’ rather than isolated grains. HAMR addresses how to write higher coercivity media to enable the second pathway. To achieve the highest possible areal densities, both technologies will likely be necessary.

It anticipates a new technology will be needed in the 2014/2015 period. So, the key question; which technology will come first; HAMR or BPM?

The ASTC FAQ says: "It is still too early in the development stage to make a definitive decision."

Tell that to Western Digital and Xyratex, whose executives have been telling financial analysts and investors they think HAMR could come first. On that basis it looks like the choice for HAMR could be a done deal as far as Western Digital and Xyratex are concerned.

The ASTC represents fast and positive progress on the STA base and, with its wider membership, should realistically hope to accelerate the pace of disk drive technology development so as to enable all of us to benefit from affordable disk drives in the future with the increased capacities that our digital universe will need. ®