History (1994): Asahi, HP and Komag in New MR Head Venture

Asahi Glass Co., Ltd. of Japan, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Komag, Inc. have established a new company, Headway Technologies, Inc., to research, develop and manufacture magneto-resistive heads for the data storage industry.

Dr. Ralph Patterson, 49, who has been director of HP’s Computer Peripherals Laboratory, is the newly-appointed president and CEO of the joint venture that will begin with 70 staff members, many of whom are from the Dastek team, a joint venture between Asahi Glass and Komag specializing in disk heads.

HP and Asahi Komag have provided the initial cash funding to Headway through the acquisition of equity. Additional funding will occur over time upon achievement of specific technical milestones.

As part of the formation agreement, HP licensed its proprietary dual-stripe technology to the new company in exchange for additional equity. Similarly, Komag and its principle shareholder, Asahi Glass, licensed the MR technology developed by Dastek. They also contributed certain research and production equipment in exchange for additional equity. As a result of these transactions, disk maker Komag will hold a voting interest of less than 20%.

“HP holds the majority of Headway,” said Dayrell Drake, HDD product marketing manager at HP in Bristol, UK.

The heads produced by Headway will be sold to HP or other HDD manufacturers. Volume production should begin next year.

Relations between HP and Komag’s subsidiary Dastek already existed. The company abandoned production of thin-film heads in order to concentrate on development of MR heads. In 1992, HP announced that it was developing MR heads that Dastek would manufacture and the first deliveries took place the following year.

IBM is currently the only firm to produce in volume, but only for themselves, these MR heads that can increase the capacity of a magnetic platter by 50 percent. Big Blue is also the only one to integrate the heads into all of its drives.

Fujitsu, Hitachi and Toshiba have already announced HDDs with MR heads. Quantum has just invested in this technology via its acquisition of Rocky Mountain Magnetics. Other manufacturers to look for in the future are SAE/TDK, Read-Rite and Applied Magnetics. Seagate has also mastered this technology, but has yet to bring out a single hard drive outfitted with the new heads.

Like IBM, HP is also working on the next generation of heads, based on giant magneto-resistive technology that will result in a significant jump in HDDs with areal densities of 2Gb per square inch. The output from the new laboratories is expected in 1997.

The Dual-Stripe MagnetoResistive (DSMR) technology has been in development by HP for more than 10 years, according to Drake.

As of the first of next November, the U.S. firm will launch 3 one-inch high 3.5-inch HDDs witht PRML. The C3331A models should have a memory of 4.3GB, and the 2 others, the C3330A and C3325A, a capacity of 2.17GB. Implementation of PRML in the C3325A unit allows for a 43% increase in areal density, as compared to the first generation C3323A, according to Hewlett-Packard. This grouping, along with certain improvements in the recording heads and magnetic film, has led to a 74% increase in areal density, the firm added. The C3330A and C3331 A models, to be in volume production for 2095, have an announced MTBF of 1,200,000 hours, against 800,000 hours for the C3325A, in general availability for 4Q94. Evaluation units for the 3 products will be obtainable as of the announcement date.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 81, published on October 1994.