• Active or completed projects: 17
• Estimated ATP funding: $76,446,000
• Industry cost-share funding: $80,122,000

Potential for U.S. Economic Benefit. The nation’s digital storage industry—maker of the tapes, disks, and other gear that have become the archives and the retrieval tools of the information age—achieved its world-leading status by doubling storage capacity about every 18 months. Now, with competitors matching that rate of progress and new storage-hungry services rolling onto the information highway, industry observers say regaining lost market shares and pulling away from the global pack will require an annual improvement rate of about 60 percent—or more than twice as fast as today’s blistering pace.

By fostering industrial alliances, the ATP focused program on digital data storage aims to build the springboard for that kind of ambitious leap in technological capability and marketplace performance. As the world goes digital—storing mountains of textual, audio, graphical, and video information as 1’s and 0’s—opportunities are multiplying in business and consumer markets. Industry projections expect the annual demand for rigid disk drives alone—largely for personal computers and file servers—to grow from about 160.6 million terabytes in 1996 to an awe-inspiring 2,800 million terabytes or more by 2000.

Burgeoning new applications in application such as video and multimedia editing, data-warehousing, and medical imaging are creating new demands for alternate storage media. Optical disks and tape library products are expected to see compound annual growth rates of 30 percent in units shipped over the next few years. Companies adept at incorporating new technologies will have a strategic advantage in existing and emerging markets. For the domestic industry as a whole, that advantage would advance efforts to establish U.S. formats as international standards, which would be a boon to exports.

In helping U.S. industry to move to the head of the curve of technology development and application, the focused program also will better position U.S. companies to compete in consumer markets now dominated by soon-to-be- outdated analog storage products made by foreign manufacturers. In turn, a technologically advanced, globally competitive data storage industry will enhance the competitive prospects of computer manufacturers as well as the telecommunications, entertainment, and other important user industries.

Technology Challenge and Industry Commitment. The ATP Digital Data Storage focused program concentrates on accomplishing six technical objectives, established on the basis of industry input received through white papers submitted by five individual companies and three collaborations representing more than 40 firms, which account for more than 90 percent of U.S. data storage industry revenues. Additional input was gathered through an ATP-sponsored workshop.

• Media: Push the ultimate limits of magnetic recording capacity by increasing storage densities to 10 billion to 100 billion bits per square inch (6.45 cm²) for disks and to 1 trillion bytes per cubic inch (16.39 cm³) for tapes; for electro-optical disks, develop new materials to increase storage density and improve performance.
• Heads: Develop technologies for high-performance magnetic recording heads that are vastly superior to today’s state of the art, and significantly improve magneto-optical record and sense technologies.
• Tribology: Develop new lubricants and surface finishes, because, as the space between heads and media diminishes, separation cannot be assured, creating the potential for wear and increased error rates.
• Tracking: Develop reliable micropositioning devices for high-precision placement of sensing devices over data tracks to achieve high signal-to-noise ratios.
• Channel electronics: Improve signal-processing electronics to achieve very low error rates.
• Software: Significantly advance the state of the art in data storage and retrieval software over the range extending from error detection and correction within storage units and disk controllers to management of menageries of data storage systems.

Significance of ATP Funds. In establishing a comprehensive set of technical goals far beyond the capabilities of individual firms or joint ventures, the ATP focused program helps companies and research organizations to pool their talents, expertise, and resources. Through collaborations that minimize risks and costs, the industry can make large strides in innovation that lead to markedly superior technologies beyond the capabilities of competitors. Because of today’s stiff competition in markets for digital data storage products, U.S. firms must concentrate almost exclusively on rapid, but incremental, improvements to existing products, which are quickly matched or outdone by other companies. Research addressing longer term challenges is an acknowledged industry need, cited, for example, in separate technology roadmaps developed by the National Storage Industry Consortium and the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association. Both call for concerted efforts aimed at fundamentally new and better storage technologies—the expected outcomes of the ATP focused program.

Advances in data storage technology are important to national security and to the missions of federal agencies, including some sponsoring research in the area. The projects are aligned closely with the missions of the funding agencies and, collectively, do not address the broad range of technology challenges and needs confronting the commercial data storage industry. In a recent survey of the electronics industry’s technology needs and priorities, conducted as part of the government-industry National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative, mass data storage was singled out as one of the key electronic-component technologies warranting increased emphasis in federal R&D efforts.

Shared efforts concentrating on early-stage needs and obstacles can reduce overall R&D costs and accelerate the U.S. digital data storage industry’s progress toward developing technologies critical to ensuring that it will be a top performer in a worldwide market projected to grow tenfold, to $1 trillion, during the next decade.

Additional Information. For information about eligibility, how to apply, and cost-sharing requirements, contact the Advanced Technology Program:

(800)-ATP-FUND (800)-287-3863
http://www.atp.nist.gov
email: atp@nist.gov
fax: (301) 926-9524
100 Bureau Drive, MS 4720
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-4720

For technical information, contact:
Michael Schen, Group Leader, ITEO
(301) 975-6741
email: michael.schen@nist.gov
fax: (301) 926-9524

Date created: January 1999
Last updated: April 12, 2005