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Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 18:37:26 -0400
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Subject: New IBM Drives: 15MB/sec.
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SAN JOSE, Calif., October 9, 1995 . . . IBM today announced two new capacity
points for its high performance line of 3.5-inch Ultrastar 2XP disk drives. A
9.1 GB capacity drive upgrades the company's planned 8.7 GB version. An
additional Ultrastar 2XP drive will be available at 4.5 GB capacity. The
Ultrastar 2XP drives spin at 7200 RPM and feature a media data rate of 10.3 -
15.5 MB/sec.

The drives' combination of high capacity and superior performance creates a
storage solution ideally suited for subsystem and high-speed network server
installations, as well as for applications demanding fast access to large
amounts of data, such as large-scale imaging, multimedia and multi-user
databases. The Ultrastar 2XP drives use an embedded sector servo technology
to facilitate the high-speed data streaming required by video-based
applications. They also feature an advanced implementation of the
industry-standard S.M.A.R.T. protocol to safeguard mission critical data.
Ultrastar 2XP drives take advantage of key storage technologies such as
Magneto-Resistive (MR) heads and Partial Response Maximum Likelihood (PRML)
technology, developed by IBM to provide industry-leading performance.

"To date, IBM has shipped more than 100 million MR heads, and over 3 million
PRML-enhanced drives," commented Bill Almon, business line manager at IBM
Storage Systems Division in San Jose, California. "The leadership areal
densities that we have been able to achieve through these technologies have
enabled us to offer drives to subsystem and server manufacturers that meet
their highest performance, capacity and reliability specifications."

                STORAGE INNOVATION AT WORK

IBM has utilized four key technologies to enhance capacity and performance in
the Ultrastar 2XP family:

- Magneto-Resistive (MR) heads make possible leadership areal
  densities of 829 Mbits/sq.in.
- PRML, (enhanced with a digital filter and now known as PRDF)
  produces lower soft error rates and enables the higher data
  throughput rates ideal for multimedia and audio-visual
  applications.
- No-ID sector formatting eliminates operational storage
  overhead and frees more disk space for end user data.
- Embedded sector servo technology, which distributes
  operational information across all drive surfaces
  instead of using a dedicated surface, eliminating the
  need for thermal calibrations in the Ultrastar 2XP.
  Thermal calibrations are frequently the source of
  interrupted data flows which can result in interrupted
  playback.

                 PROTECTING END USER DATA

In compliance with the industry-standard S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis
and Reporting Technology) protocol endorsed by IBM and leading disk drive
manufacturers, IBM's Ultrastar 2XP drives monitor key device performance
indicators and report significant changes. This helps provide advanced
warning of an impending drive failure. This advanced predictive technology,
known as Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA), has been included on nearly three
million IBM SCSI disk drives shipped to date. In addition to monitoring
usage-based changes and error rates, PFA is capable of detecting tiny
variations in head-to-disk fly height, which degrades progressively prior to
a head crash. Such sensitivity helps Ultrastar 2XP drives provide the time
necessary for data backup and protection routines. Ultrastar 2XP drives have
an estimated Mean Time Between Failure ratings of one million power-on hours
(1).

          CURRENT AND NEXT GENERATION INTERFACES

Accommodating the growing trend towards serial interfaces, Ultrastar 2XP
drives are available with an advanced Serial Storage Architecture (SSA)
interface. SSA enables more flexible and more cost effective configurations,
as well as performance rates to 80 MB/sec (20 MB/sec per link with four
links). The drives also support SCSI-3 Fast-20 (Ultra SCSI), which offers
burst data transfer rates to 20 MB/sec for narrow SCSI or 40 MB/sec for Wide
SCSI, and a variety of SCSI-2 interface models: 50-pin FAST single-ended,
68-pin Fast/Wide single-ended or Differential, and 80-pin single ended.

Evaluation units of IBM's Ultrastar 2XP disk drive model DCHS-34550 (4.5 GB
SCSI) are available now, with evaluation units of the SSA and Ultra SCSI
models planned for availability in the first quarter of 1996. Evaluation
units of the Ultrastar 2XP model DCHS-39100 (9.1 GB SCSI) are available now,
with evaluation units of the Ultra SCSI model planned for the first quarter
of 1996.
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