Aerial density was key for us because we knew we had to get more capacity on these platters. We did not want to add more platters and more heads to achieve the capacity range. There are some fringe benefits such as the ability to reduce the number of components in that drive when your aerial density goes up per gigabit. |
As SATA transitions into the notebook environment, only then will SATA become mainstream. |
For longitudinal recording to reach those capacities, you would have to add another platter and more heads, and that's just not feasible--it's no longer a notebook drive. With the growth and capacity changes, perpendicular [recording] seemed like a good fit. |
It wasn't supposed to launch for another couple of months, but we're finding perpendicular improves yields and reliability right off the manufacturing line. |
It's being investigated, but it's very niche. We're keeping our eyes on that. |
We also noticed that customers were looking for larger and larger drives, which is why we saw an opportunity to develop perpendicular recording on those models. |
We didn't expect to be first to market with perpendicular, but we're pretty excited with where we are. |
We don't charge a premium for perpendicular. |
We shipped almost 70 million 2.5-inch drives in 2005, a remarkable increase over the 50 million shipped the previous year. |
We've bumped up operating shock tolerance from 250Gs to 350Gs, and non- operating shock is 900Gs. |