San Jose, California-based 3M, has announced an aggressive new project designed to drive the capacity of data cartridge technology past the 100Gb level. The migration path will include interim steps at 10Gb and 35Gb prior to the introduction of a 100Gb product toward the end of the decade. Much of the capacity improvement will be generated through significant increases in track densities, more than a seven-fold enhancement over the current products to reach the 35Gb. To achieve these high track densities, 3M is developing a high-accuracy servo positioning system. It is focusing its development on a new barium ferrite formulation for the 35Gb product class, while a new high-output cobalt chrome formulation is proposed for the 100Gb cartridge.
