Seagate clears the air on HAMR vs BPM

by David Burks
Director Product Marketing – 3.5-inch PC Client
Seagate Technology

It sometimes amazes me how much speculation occurs on the internet.  I’m not sure why – I suppose that speculation actually accounts for a good bit of internet content! I suppose it just seems strange to see some this stuff show up on topics near and dear to your heart (or at least your job) and find yourself thinking. “I didn’t know that! Perhaps I should!”

Take, for example, this recent post by The Register speculating on Seagate’s investment (or lack there off ) on Bit Pattern Media.  As an employee of Seagate and someone who gets paid to help communicate information on our products and technology, this one caught me off guard.  So let’s put this in context with Seagate’s position on the matter.

Seagate’s business is storage.  A key pillar of our long term position in this industry is centered on maintaining and building on-going leadership in core storage technologies. To achieve this, Seagate always maintains investments in every viable technology that may yield one of our next products.

With respect to the STA committee within IDEMA, Seagate is a member of STA but also continues to lead its own sizable effort in the development of both Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and Bit Patterned Media (BPM).  Seagate views both of these two technologies as important and potentially, complementary, which in the future could conceivably be merged. This is an area Seagate continues to explore in research.

As a guy who gets to work with some scary smart people in our R&D group, I have no concerns at all about the “hammer” coming down on Seagate!