History (1994): ATG Cygnet With 14GB on Optical WORM in 1995

Optical WORM disk manufacturers are getting ready to fight to increase the capacity of their 12-inch media.

Philips LMS and Hitachi should reach 12GB on both sides of a disk, Sony 14GB.

For the end of 95, according to its sales and marketing VP, Eric Hesnard, ATG Cygnet (Toulouse, France) should reach 14GB with current lasers.

The French manufacturer has also committed itself in developing a double-head drive for its current 10.2GB – on two sides – disk for the beginning of 95. It also is preparing a rewritable 12-inch optical disk based on the M-O or phase change technology, the final choice having not yet been reached.

Only one 12-inch rewritable optical disk exists today, manufactured by Nikon.

ATG Cygnet has signed an agreement for it with the Japanese to develop an appropriate jukebox.

Another jukebox will also be designed for Sony’s analog 12-inch disks.

The great project concerning jukeboxes is actually an automatic multimedia library that can accept, at the same time and at one’s convenience, magnetic cartridges, CD-ROMs or optical disks.

“This should be the ideal device to support HSM software.“

The prototype will be displayed at the next AIIM show in New York, NY. The latest current development, named Optarray, is achieved with another company, Aton Systèmes (Créteil, France), specialized in RAIDs. The idea is to build storage subsystems based on magnetic and optical disks completely transparent to users with an SCSI interface. The subsystem will include a RAID in front of a 12-inch WORM disk jukebox.

According to Hesnard, ATG Cygnet will report close to FF140 million in its fiscal period ended March 94 with a profit close to FF8 million, this period includes company’s activity since its acquisition in October 93.

“In 1993, we shipped 1,000 drives and a little less than 20,000 disks,” he said.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠74, published on March 1994.