SONY
Future of Data Storage Begins with AIT
Small but Powerful, Sony's Award-Winning AIT Drive is Equipped to Handle the Data Deluge.
With optimized information access features, the AIT Drive is designed to handle the upcoming explosion of data storage management.
In businesses around the globe, there is an immediate need for cost-effective, high-speed, large-capacity tape storage that can reliably back up large-scale network servers handling huge volumes of images and other storage-intensive data. To meet this growing business demand, Sony has unveiled new standards in tape storage technology. The AIT (Advanced Intelligent Tape) format is Sony's latest innovation in fast access high density tape recording technology. AIT forms the basis of Sony's new SDX series of tape drives and media. The ability to store large amounts of data and retrieve information quickly is critical in today's applications. Tape storage and retrieval has been revolutionized by Sony's award-winning Memory In Cassette (MIC) architecture. The MIC consists of a memory chip built into the data cartridge which holds the system's log and other user-definable information. Applications that benefit from MlC's capabilities include hierarchical storage management, video server, film editing, and real- time data acquisition.The AIT drive ensures extreme reliability with unique features to meet users needs for increased back-up capacity. Sony's AIT drive has been designed for strenuous, high duty-cycle applications, by employing techniques described here. The AIT drive is designed with the storage demands of the future in mind. The critical head and media technologies are currently being proven for a second-generation AIT (AIT-Z) product that will double capacity and performance again.
The history of Sony's vapor deposition tape technology development
Sony has long been the leading innovator in high-density tape media technology. In order to achieve high durability in its SDX product line, Sony's AIT only uses Advanced Metal Evaporated (AM E) tape, which represents 35 years of Sony innovation and experience in magnetic tape technology. Following are some of the milestones in Sony's research and development of advanced media recording technology:
| 1958 | Commencement of fundamental research into metal vapor deposition |
| 1980 | Success in metal vapor deposition on a research institute scale |
| 1987 | Establishment of metal vapor deposition mass production technology |
| 1989 | Market introduction of the "Hi 8ME" 8mm video cassette for consumer use |
| 1990 | Market introduction of the "Hi 8 ME" cassette for broadcast use |
| 1992 | Commercialization of the "NT" stamp-sized cassette digital memo recorder |
| 1994 | Announcement of DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) protective film and introduction of "super durable" AME (Advanced Metal Evaporated) tape |
| 1995 | Market launch of "DVC (Digital Video Cassette)" for general use using AME |
| 1996 | Introduction of AIT technology using AME tape |
The history of Sony recording drives
The development and commercialization of innovative tape recording techniques and mechanisms are a hallmark of Sony's commitment to technological excellence. Following are some examples of products and technologies brought to market over the past 45 years:
| 1950 | First audio recorded and stationary head device |
| 1963 | Portable video recorder utilizing helical scan |
| 1971 | U-matic video tape recorder |
| 1975 | Betamax |
| 1977 | 1" video tape recorder |
| 1982 | Betacam |
| 1985 | 8mm video tape recorder |
| 1987 | Digital Audio Tape. Component digital VTA (D-1 ) for broadcast use. |
| 1988 | Composite digital VTR (D-2) for broadcast use. |
| 1989 | Digital Data Storage. |
| 1993 | Component digital VTR Betacam for broadcast use |
| 1995 | Digital VCR, digital handicam for home use |
| 1996 | Advanced Intelligent Tape drive: The SDX-300C series of drives. Sony AIT wins "Best New Tape Technology Award" by Byte Magazine |
AIT provides a pleasant, easy-to-use backup environment for high end-users
AIT was developed for the purpose of efficiently and reliably storing large amounts of data. The recording capacity of over 50Gbytes together with a data transfer speed of 6MBytes/sec, high speed file access, and unsurpassed head and media life, make AIT a true leader in tape technology.
AIT achieves outstanding capacity and reliability in a tiny, 3.5-inch form factor
Sony achieves unprecedented results with its AIT recording technology, providing high capacity and performance in a small form factor. The new drives and media, aided by the Advanced Metal Evaporated (AME) tape formulation, achieve a native capacity of 25 GB (50GB"/compression) and a data transfer rate of 3.0 MB/second (6.0MB/sec. with compression).
Reliable Data Storage
The same reliable magnetic recording technology that the broadcast industry relies upon is also the important technology in the AIT format. The servo tracking system permits high-density recording through accurate tracking using embedded servo bursts. Furthermore, the use of an encoding system that optimizes the media and head performance, with advanced electronics, contributes to a significant improvement in high-density recording.
Eliminating Head Contamination
In conventional drives, cleaning is required periodically to remove the contamination that accumulates on the read/write heads. The AIT is designed to only recognize and use the extremely durable AME media which has been proven to provide a virtually contamination-free operating environment. In the event that the AIT drive senses the buildup of contamination, Sony's patented "Active Head Cleaner" is activated to remove the debris, without user or application intervention.
Efficient Data Management
In order to access mission-critical data as fast as possible, the MIC system provides a sophisticated data access capability utilizing up to 256 on-tape partitions. This feature facilitates application management of the stored blocks of data on the cartridge by providing the user data space in the memory chip. Also, it provides the benefit of loading/unloading the tape at any partition, thereby providing the user the locality to data needed for fast access.
Extends Head Life
Sony's AIT tape tension control is based on years of experience and maintains tape tension at less than one-half of other competing technologies. This continued feature senses and controls tension fluctuations to reduce tape and head wear. In addition, AIT uses ball-bearing roller guides for gentle tape handling and enhanced mechanism and media reliability.
High Speed Data Transfer
AIT incorporates fast/wide SCSI technology to maximize, data transfer to and from the host system at a burst rate of 20 MBytes/sec.
Extremely Efficient High-Bandwidth Data Compression
Sony's AIT design incorporates IBM's Advanced Lossless Data Compression (ALDC) technology to provide state-of-the-art performance and capacity features. IBM's research has shown that ALDC provides substantially greater compression efficiency compared to older technology IDRC or DLZ algorithms.
Sony has made use of its technical knowledge and advancements in vapor deposition technology that enables the recording and protection of over 25GB of data using an AIT-1 tape. Immediate management and retrieval of this vast amount of data is made possible through the revolutionary use of the MIC.
Advanced Metal Evaporated (AME) tape enhances the reliability of the SDX products
The AME magnetic layers are of 100% cobalt material. This Hyperevaticle magnetic material is a diversion from the traditional cobalt/nickel alloy of prior vapor deposited tape. The magnetic material is deposited in a columnar structure directly on the basefilm in a vacuum chamber. The structure is optimized to produce a recording surface having high values of magnetic characteristics. AME has twice the magnetic flux density of coated media and an increase of 5dB in short wave length recording readback output when compared to conventional Metal Evaporated tape. This translates to the capability of improved levels of recording density and recording system performance.
Vacuum Vapor Deposition process
The magnetic material is deposited directly on the subsrate without the use of a chemical binder. The cobalt material is heated by on electron bram and results in a vapor deposited magnetic surface tree of any impurities.
Diamond Like Carbon Protective Film Provides Durability and Reliability
The DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) coating is a carbon protective layer that approaches the hardness of diamond. This protective layer is in the order of nanometers and dramatically improves the abrasion resistance and overall tape durability. The increased durability and additional surface oxidation protection results in a low initial error rate and extended recording life.
Error Rate
With DLC, not only does output remain superbly high, but error rates remain exceptionally low.
Memory in cassette
Building upon the design innovations initially developed by the consumer products group, Sony's AIT team expanded the use of the flash memory chip within the AIT architecture to capture various system and user-related statistics directly within the MIC structure to enhance data reliability, error prediction and success performance.
The Customer benefits of MIC Include the Following:
- faster access to data;
- better reliability through predictive diagnosis of media degradation;
- faster and more reliable access to volume serial information;
- better data-set management through use of user-specified volume and partition notes;
- greater data integrity though a fault-tolerant system log; and
- enhanced media security through the use of decryption codes stored in the MIC.
The MIC Concept
The MIC hardware consists of a 16Kbit EEPROM that is mounted within the data cartridge and includes a 5-pin interface to the drive or other external connection (See Fig 1). Using a serial interface to the memory chip, the AIT drives are able to store and retrieve selected information directly from the chip and use this to provide realtime benefits to customer applications. The information stored within the MIC consists of a combination of drive and user-generated information, as shown in the illustration.
The MIC information consists of data written at the time of cartridge manufacture, data written when the media is first loaded into an AIT drive, portions updated as part of a read, write or load sequence, and finally portions that can be written directly by a user's application.
Improved Access To Data
The total information now contained within the MIC can be used in a variety of ways to enhance tape sub-system benefits to users. The first area of benefit is improved access to data. When used in conjunction with tape partitioning, the use of MIC can cut total data access time by up to 50 percent compared to conventional methods. The improvement can be shown by referring to Fig 2. By utilizing the "device area" within each partition's format, the AIT drive can load the tape at any partition, read the system log information directly from the MIC and proceed to the targeted file, without first reading the tape.
Fast Forward Search Mode
In addition, the MIC can also be used to accelerate access times by utilizing its stored information in combination with an innovative high-speed "fast forward" search speed of 150 times nominal (about 120 inches per second) to space forward several files or partitions.
Volume Management/Data Security
Other benefits derived from the use of MIC include volume management and reliability by taking advantage of the ECC count and load count information to predict media-related failures. Another feature of the MIC architecture is enhanced data integrity and security of critical customer data. The system log information typically stored on tape is also redundantly stored within the MIC to provide the enhanced data access techniques described earlier.
AIT is an advanced format that will grow with you
Large volumes of information are being created daily, and how we manage this data is an important issue. In light of this data explosion, there is no doubt that the importance of back up is evident now and will only increase in the future. Innovative approaches will be required in order to cope and AIT is a new standard created to respond to this need. In the next generation of computing and beyond, AIT will continue to be the leading backup technology and set the standards for the industry, utilizing Sony's proven leadership in magnetic tape recording technology.
Q&A
Q1 What is AIT?
A1 AIT (Advanced Intelligent Tape) is a new intelligent tape technology developed by Sony. It incorporates a new recording format, ALDC compression, MIC (Memory In Cassette) capabilities, and the exclusive use of AME (Advanced Metal Evaporated) media.
Q2 What is SDX?
A2 SDX is the series name of the media and hardware associated with the AIT format incorporated in a 3.5-inch form factor.
Q3 Is it compatible with other 8mm data cartridges?
A3 The AIT format is a future-oriented format that sets newperformance and capacity standards for utilizing high-density recording. Its design is optimized for recording AME media and will not accommodate older media types.
Q4 Why a new format?
A4 With the ever increasing need for higher capacity, reliability and performance, Sony recognized the importance of developing a format that met these requirements rather than making compromises to achieve compatibility with the past.
Q5 What happens if I mistakenly insert an 8mm cartridge other than AIT into the drive?
A5 The AIT drive will eject the cartridge as unsupported media. If you mistakenly put the AIT into another drive, other 8mm mechanisms will accept the AIT cassette, but it is permanently write protected. The recorded data is never damaged.
Q6 Are there any other companies supporting this format?
A6 Sony is working with major vendors and expects other companies to introduce products based on AIT in the near future.
Q7 Is Sony the only source for media?
A7 Currently, Sony is the only source for media, and is one of the largest vendors of media in the world. At the same time, Sony is working with other potential suppliers to provide a second source for the AME media.
Q8 For what applications is the AIT suited?
A8 In addition to conventional unattended backup, AIT is also suited O to a wide range of applications, such as image/multimedia, storage and retrieval, real-time data acquisition, transportable storage, as well as storage management applications.
Q9 What is AME ?
A9 AME (Advanced Metal Evaporated) is the tape formulation used by AIT. Key characteristics include 100% pure cobalt magnetic layer, dual magnetic layer design, the absence of binder material to prevent tape head contamination, and DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) protective coating for extreme durability.
Q10 About how long is the media life?
A10 Based on Sony's media life experiments, it is estimated to be 30 years, similar to other current tape media.
Q11 Does AIT require cleaning like other tape mechanisms?
A11 Unlike many conventional tape drives, there is no need for periodic cleaning of AIT drives. The drive itself constantly monitors head output to check for possible contamination and will then invoke the built-in Active Head Cleaner. Under extreme environmental conditions, a cleaning cartridge may be required and the drive will indicate this to the user and the application.
Q12 Is AIT being used within Sony?
A12 It is already implemented in video servers, for DVD mastering, and data recorders. Further implementation of AIT within other Sony products are expected.
