ESPRIT supports breakthrough in Europe's disk drive industry
An ESPRIT-funded project is spearheading Europe's participation in the $25 billion global disk drive industry. SCOTSMAN (Strategic Components, Technologies and Systems in Magnetic Storage) is a collaborative ESPRIT project centred on the work of Europe's only two indigenous disk-drive development companies: Calluna Technology Ltd. (Glenrothes, Scotland) and Myrica UK Ltd.(Dunfermline, Scotland). Although the majority of the world's magnetic disk drive technology is focused in a small part of the Western USA, these two companies have been making a name for themselves recently by concentrating on niche markets involving removable storage - the area of highest growth for the world-wide storage industry. A key technology provider for the two disk drive companies is Silmag S.A. (Grenoble, France), whose revolutionary planar heads are being enhanced further to provide the extremely high data densities required - 800 Mbit/square inch initially, leading on to 1.2 Gbit/square inch prototypes using the Giant Magneto-resistance effect. Other members of the consortium include Nomai S.A. (Avranches, France),the parent company of Myrica, and Xyratex Ltd (Havant, England), home of the former IBM disk drive facility. In addition, the two systems companies Fast Multimedia GmbH (Munich, Germany) and Acorn Risc Technologies (Cambridge, England) are participating as users. Following successful sampling at key customer sites, Calluna is now starting up production of its 520MB PC Card disk drive developed within SCOTSMAN. "The introduction of such a high storage capacity in a compact and rugged PC Card package has significantly increased the demand for removable 1.8" disk drives", said David Ruxton, sales and marketing director at Calluna. "In addition to the obvious uses in notebook, pen and rugged portable computers, we are working with customers who are applying these tiny drives in telecommunication exchange storage, car navigation and diagnostic systems, speech and video storage, digital film and image storage systems and in a variety of industrial controllers and test and measurement equipment". Project coordinator, Dr. Nigel Mackintosh commented: "My goal was to put all the European disk-drive expertise together. Originally, it was meant to be a much smaller project, but I felt that the best way to compete with the financial might of the Americans was to collaborate in this way. Thanks to the encouragement of the EC, it seems to be paying off".