1. Progress and Outlook of HDD
Technology
Xiaodong (Carl) Che and Roger Wood
© 2012 HGST, a Western Digital company
2. HDD Structure & Components
In-hub Disk with
spindle motor Perpendicular
& fluid bearing Recording
Medium
Actuator
Arm-stack
Voice-Coil
Motor
Suspensions
Load/Unload
Ramps
Connector Preamplifier
Write-driver
Aluminum base-casting
(electronics card not shown) (cover not shown)
© 2012 HGST, a Western Digital company 2
3. HDD History
1960 1980-89 1990-99 2000-09 2010-19 2020
Servers & Desktop PCs External HD Digital Audio HDTVs Beyond…
Mainframes Notebook PCs DVRs Gaming Cloud storage
Digital Photos / Cams Social media
Mobile Phones
Surveillance
The Nobel Price in Physics, 2007
© 2012 HGST, a Western Digital company 3
4. Transformation of HDD
1975
20 GigaBytes
$ 2-4 Million
One
TeraByte
$50
© 2012 HGST, a Western Digital company 4
5. Areal Density Historical Trend
10000 Hitachi/HGST
IBM 20~35% CGR
Quantum/Seagate
1000
Areal Density (Gb/in2)
Toshiba 45% CGR
SMR
Fujitsu MAMR
GMR heads LDPC TAR
100 Samsung MEPRML channel channel BPR
TDMR
PMR
TFC 4k sector
90% CGR 30% CGR
CPP-GMR
10 MR head TMR Head
AFC Media Head
thin film media
PRML channel
1
60% CGR
0.1
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
Year product available (Mobile 5400 RPM)
© 2012 HGST, a Western Digital company
6. Future Technology Roadmap
Energy Assisted Recording probably on BPM 100
Shingled Write & Two Dimensional Magnetic Recording (TDMR) Tb/in2
Bit Patterned Magnetic Recording (BPMR)
Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) 10 Tb/in2
Areal Density
Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR)
Shingled Write Recording (SWR)
5 Tb/in2
Shingled Write Recording (SWR)
1 Tb/in2
Perpendicular Magnetic
Recording (PMR)
Superpara-magnetic limit
Longitudinal Magnetic
Recording (LMR)
150 Gb/in2
Time
Y. Shiroishi, Intermag 2009, FA-01
© 2012 HGST, a Western Digital company 6
7. HDD Three Level Technology Enablers
Magnetic Elec.
Platforms
Comp. systems
• Scaling • adv. LDPC • Multi. Disks
• HAMR • SMR • Thin Z-height
• MAMR • TDMR • Helium filled
• BPM/HAMR • 4K/Beyond • DSA
• etc… • etc… • Hybrid
• Cold Storage
• etc…
7
© 2012 HGST, a Western Digital company
8. Key Technology Challenges for HDD
Grow capacity $/GB, GB/Watt, GB/sq ft. etc.
• Areal density – disruptive technologies are coming soon
• Platter count
Reduce unit cost & increase reliability
Increase performance & functionality (e.g., security, power,
acoustics)
New form factors and applications
– Smart devices – ‘thin and light’, instant-on
– Cloud – bigger, slower, $/GB
© 2012 HGST, a Western Digital company
