The demand for capacity on the hard drive seems to be a bottomless pit, the bigger the better, and then large enough. Not only to save DVD movies, we still have to keep HD DVD movies. Now 80Gb laptop hard drive is really more common unbearable.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of IBM invented the disk. After 50 years of development, magnetic recording it come to an end? You can step forward? Many people are in doubt.
In this year's CES show in January, Micron CEO Steve Appleton in the company's remarks to the media with particular emphasis on NAND flash memory advantages of the provincial space, he said: "The average capacity of notebook hard drives 30GB, using NAND flash memory solid state disk technology, when replace the hard drive? Maybe five, maybe six years (case 1). " Under the Moore's Law, NAND flash memory density doubling every year, prices fell 35% -45% per year. Steve Appleton projected by Moore's death is a hard drive. The public remark, the media flew up, and even the United States CNews.com "Good-bye hard drive, hello flash" published a lengthy technical review (Event 2).
June, Samsung announced the availability of 32GB NAND flash laptop solid state disk (event 3). In the conference, Samsung executives asserted that "Hard times have entered the evening, flash time coming." July 17 market research company said in its latest report, by 2013 there will be 50% of NAND flash memory solid-state notebook drive installed in the next 10 years, NAND flash solid state disk will become the preferred storage device for mobile computing (Event 4).
Magnetic recording really has come to end the life cycle is not it?
In fact, by 2005 a new generation of magnetic storage technology - perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) has completed the product of. Currently, PMR technology, Seagate current production product storage density per sq when the 133Gb, Hitachi per square inch when the 178Gb. Hitachi announced in April 2005 has the highest density per square inch can be achieved when the 230Gb. Seagate CTO, on September 15 this year, said the company has reached a per square foot when the 421Gb (case 5). The CTO said, PMR technology is expected to increase storage density in 2009, when per sq 1TGb, then a single hard drive capacity will be up to 5TB.
Because PMR technology breakthroughs, Seagate announced in January this year for 160GB notebook hard drive (event 6), Hitachi in May, Fujitsu has also announced in August the same level of product (case 7).
While progress in magnetic recording, NAND Flash memory has also been a major breakthrough. September 11, Samsung announced a 32GB flash memory using 40nm process chips and 2010 chips based on 20nm process capacity of flash memory up to 128MB-256MB (event 8). But some analysts believe that in the foreseeable future, NAND flash solid state disk capacity limit of 100GB (event 9).
Seagate company Sept. 18 to announce the shocking, as the next generation of magnetic recording PMR technology, heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) was a major breakthrough. Company CTO Mark said, HAMR technology has reached the storage density per sq when 50Tb, the current record than the PMR when the 421Gb per square inch than two orders of magnitude (Event 10).
The highest level by the current PMR conversion, for MP3/MP4 players, small hard drive capacity up to 275Gb, notebook computer hard drives up to 500Gb, desktop hard drives up to 2.5Tb. And now 80Gb laptop hard drive is concerned about, PMR has been quite amazing. But if HAMR production, conversion look, even notebook hard disk capacity is expected to reach 50Tb!
Hard drive is moving towards madness.