History 2001: Sony Hopes to Put 1TB in AIT-Type Tape Cartridge

Sony is working on the development of a next-gen magnetic recording technology that will result in up to 1TB capacity in the same 8mm cassette form factor used for its current AIT line, which now maxes at 50GB and 6MB/second for the AIT-2.

To get this high, the company will combine a highly-sensitive GMR head with newly developed high-density metal evaporated tape, for areal density of 6.5GB per square-inch. Track width is 0.8μm and minimum bit length 0.1μm.

In addition to thinning the tape material (33nm, 1/6th of AIT-2 tape), the metal evaporation process has been optimized to micro-fabricate the magnetic particles to attain a signal-to-noise level of 26dB.

The company notes that the project will not have any practical application before 2003-2004. Until then, however, we’re still waiting for AIT-3 (100/12).

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 157 on February 2001 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.