HDD: The Next 50 Years

Although online registration has closed, you can register in person at the registration desk at the Hyatt Regency Hotel/Santa Clara Convention Center.

The hard disk drive is celebrating its 50th anniversary and the future has never been brighter for the disk drive industry. The industry is expected to ship as many drives in the next five years as it did in the last 50 years. Industry analysts such as Gartner, IDC and TrendFOCUS continue to forecast impressive unit and revenue growth for the global HDD market.

Today, the word “storage” is nearly synonymous with magnetic hard disk drives, for both the IT and consumer based applications. This technology, the result of 50 years of innovation originating from intensive research and development, has given the world a robust storage capability unmatched in price, capacity and performance. It is difficult to imagine a world without hard disk drives. But this industry is not resting on its accomplishments, significant as they may be. Instead, plans and strategies are in place to address storage of the future and how magnetic hard disk drives may evolve to meet new user requirements. DISKCON USA will address the business and technology aspects of our industry: its past accomplishments, its future potential and how these could be implemented via a technology roadmap. This would be designed to maintain the excellence of our product and assure its utilization as the dominant storage technology for many years to come. These topics will be presented by principal industry executives who will represent their companies and the hard disk drive industry in this anniversary conference event.

Wednesday, September 13

8:30 am

Introduction to DISKCON USA

8:35

Kick-off Speaker: Mark H. Kryder, Sr VP, Chief Technical Officer, Seagate Technology: Fifty Years of Disk Drives – And the Exciting Road Ahead

9:00

Historical Perspective on HDDs by IBM: Barry Rudolph, Vice President of Disk, SAN, and NAS Storage Systems, IBM: Disk Systems Innovation--Past, Present, Future

9:30

Coffee Break and View Exhibits

10:30

Session 1: Executive Presentations: "Company Views of Our Early Years and Strategic Directions for the Future"

In keeping with the unique and extraordinary objectives of this DISKCON anniversary event, key executives will present their views, directly from their own company perspectives, of past progress and their own concepts and strategic directions for the future. These views, from HDD developers, equipment and materials support companies, will encompass a spectrum of topics from technology to business and marketing objectives. DISKCON attendees will have the unique opportunity to hear these executives express their own opinions on the future of HDD industry, and how success and growth can be sustained through specific operating objectives. In addition, it will be an opportunity for these executives to describe a set of future ground rules to which the industry must adhere for maximum profitability and minimum risks.

Session Chairman and Moderator: Mark Geenen, President, TrendFOCUS

Special Keynote Speaker: Dr. A. Currie Munce, Jr., Vice President, Research, San Jose Research Center, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies: The Wonders of HDD Technology
Ed Braun, Chairman and CEO, Veeco
James M. Chirico, Executive Vice President, Global Disc Storage Operations, Seagate Technology
Tim Harris, COO and CEO-elect, Komag
Scott Maccabe, Vice President and General Manager, Storage Device Division, Toshiba: Innovation—The Foundation of Technology Advancement
Dr. William Cain, WD Fellow and Executive Director, Advanced Product Engineering, Western Digital
Adam Wray, Executive Vice President, Xyratex

12:30 pm

Lunch and View Exhibits

2:00

Session 2: HDD Technology and Its Future

Session Chairman: Hank Pselos, Director of Sales and Account Management, Magnecomp Precision Technology

Patrick Madsen, Director of Technology Development, Hutchinson Technology, Inc.:Suspension Technology: Historical Trends and a Future Outlook
Jeff Donnelly, VP and General Manager, KLA-Tencor: Head-Disk Interface Inspection and Metrology Challenges for Increasing Areal Density
Yoichiro Tanaka, Senior Manager, Hard Disk Drive Product Planning, Toshiba Storage Device Division: Mobile HDD Technology and Future Prospects
Luke Marusiak, COO, Intevac: Deposition Technology and Characterization for Perpendicular Media Recording
Dr. Phil Lei, Manager, Worldwide Contamination Control Engineering, Magnecomp Precision Technology: LPC Measurement, Cleaning and Methods of Reducing Contamination
Bryan Clark, Senior Director, Optical Products Group, Xyratex International: A Novel Test Approach to Meet High Volume Testing Requirements for Today and Tomorrow’s Media

Coffee Break and View Exhibits

4:00

Session Resumes

5:00

End of First Day Conference

Thursday, September 14

8:30 am

Session 3: Retrospect of HDD Industry and Future Business Directions
The HDD industry is well known for its dynamic and fast moving nature, a business environment which requires a foremost model to enable competitiveness through technical leadership, attractive pricing and timely product introduction. The nature of our business and industry will be the topic of discussion for this panel that consists of well known Wall Street analysts and financial experts. These participants will delve into the details of where the HDD industry has been and where we are potentially heading for the future. The business panel has traditionally been a key session at DISKCON, based on its frank discussion and analysis of our industry combined with up-to-date audience questions for the panel. Expect a candid review of industry features and attributes and how success can be assured from topics which include pricing and margins, competitive technologies, growth of new applications and market consolidation.

Session Chairman: Oz Fundingsland, President, OSF International

Moderator: John Monroe, Research Vice President, Storage Group, Gartner
Richard Kugele, Principal, Equity Research, Needham & Company LLC: Thoughts on the HDD Industry
Dan Renouard, Sr. Research Manager, Robert W. Baird & Company: How the Stock Market Perceives the Fundamental Changes in the HDD Industry
John Donovan, Vice President, TrendFOCUS: It's Not Just CE: Revisiting HDD Demand Drivers
Harry Blount, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Hardware, Lehman Brothers: How Will the Seagate-Maxtor Merger Affect the HDD Industry? and Other Thoughts
John Rydning, Research Manager, Hard Disk Drives & HDD Components, IDC: Disk Drive Storage: How Long can a Good thing Last?

10:00

Coffee Break and View Exhibits

10:30

Session Resumes - Panel Discussion

11:30 pm

Luncheon Keynote Speaker: Charles Sobey, Chief Scientist for ChannelScience: The Future Looks at Your Past: Digital Archeology and the Hard Disk Drive

1:00

Session 4: Highlights from Intermag 2006

The Intermag conference is a technical forum where some of the latest and greatest new technological advances for the drive industry are presented and shared. DISKCON USA 2006 will continue a tradition started a few years ago to highlight some of the papers from this conference. These talks will cover topics including the prospects for advancing recording technology over the next decade, the potential of bit-patterned media, experimental results on ECC perpendicular media which has a possibility of being used in the second or third generation of perpendicular drive products, and issues of reliability caused by ESD breakdown between a head and disk especially at the very small fly heights drive products are at today. This session will be very informative to those who would like to stay abreast of what's new in technology for the drive industry.

Session Chairman: David Wachenschwanz, Vice President, New Product Design and Integration, Komag

Dr. Roger Wood, Hitachi GST: Prospects for Magnetic Recording Over the Next 10 Years
Dr. Hans Jürgen Richter, Recording Physics Group, Seagate Technology: Recording on Bit-Patterned Media at Densities of 1Tb/in² and Beyond
Weikang Shen, University of Minnesota: Fabrication and Testing of Exchange Coupled Composite Media
Dr. Hong Zhu, Hitachi GST: Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) Breakdown Between a Recording Head and a Disk with an Asperity

2:30

Coffee Break and View Exhibits

3:00

Session 5: HDD Applications, Integration and Evolution: Users Speak Out

The hard disk drive, originally designed for storage applications for the IT industry, has a great potential for use in many other, non-traditional markets based on its low cost, high reliability, and very large storage capacity. In fact, it is this rapid growth in the demand for capacity which continues to be a principal driver for HDD development. As the HDD technology continues to evolve, new markets are expected to open, and as the basic requirements for cost, durability/reliability, and feature set improve, these new applications could dominate the demand curve for HDD products. In the emerging personal video recorder or set-top box market, for example, low cost, high capacity and low noise characteristics of HDD are very important and lead the feature list. In the portable consumer market robustness/durability and capacity may be the controlling attributes. This session will call on end-user’s or integrator’s perspectives of developing HDD features, with specific attention to new product directions required over the next five years on a market-by-market basis.

Session Chairman: Ron Dennison, Founder and Principal Consultant, Research Development Consultants Incorporated

Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin and Associates: On-Board Consumer Applications--The Next Evolution in HDD Architecture

Kartik Gada, Product Line Manager for Consumer Home Products, NETGEAR: Networked Storage – The Missing Link to Complete the Digital Home

Scott Wright, Manager of Hard Disk Drives, Toshiba SDD: The New Digital Living Room: Integrating HDDs Into the Car

Dr. Ken Morse, VP, Client Architecture, Scientific Atlanta, a Cisco Company: HDD Applications, Integration and Evolution; Users Speak Out

4:30:

Session 6: The Hybrid Landscape: Opportunity and Challenge

Both Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and semiconductor Flash memory have unique and attractive properties for non volatile storage, each with its own distinct advantages. HDD products are low cost and exhibit very large storage capacities. Flash has compactness, low power dissipation, and consequently requires less battery power. There are specific performance advantages for each. Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) technology combines these fundamental advantages to maximize the resulting storage device in many parameters, providing an opportunity for these rival technologies to complement rather than compete. Among the benefits to users of Hybrid technology are increased performance, faster boot up, and longer battery life. Next generation operating systems will support HHDD. However, hybrid technology can be implemented in several ways, with each having its own benefits and drawbacks. Should the Flash memory reside within the drive circuitry or externally, within the system? This session will bring together a panel of participants in the future hybrid marketplace to predict what will be the dominant HHDD architecture and what impact will this new technology have on the existing HDD and Flash industries. IDEMA plans to make this an exciting discussion from both business and technological aspects for this new product.

Session Chairman: Dr. Alan Armstrong, Vice President of Marketing, Storage Business Group, Marvell

Speakers include:

Knut Grimsrud, Intel Fellow, Technology and Manufacturing Group, and Director, Storage Architecture, Intel Corporation: Flash and the New Storage Hierarchy
Ruston Panabaker, Architect, Windows Hardware Innovation Group Microsoft Corporation: New Technology in Windows Vista
Paul Kusbel, Senior Director, Electrical Systems Integration, Seagate Technology: Hybrid Disc Drives – The Benefits and Challenges with the Marriage of HDD and Flash
Don Barnetson, Director of Marketing for Flash Memory, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.: Flash Caching Solutions for the PC
Dennis Zattiero, Technical Marketing Manager, Micron: Complimentary Storage Technologies
Joel Hagberg, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Fujitsu

Two Day Conference Fees:

IDEMA members: $660.00

Non-members: $930.00

One Day Conference Fees

IDEMA members: $354.00

Non-members: $510.00

Conference fees include continential breakfast, lunch, breaks, and speaker presentations