SONY UNVEILS EXTENDED AIT TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP

Company's Aggressive Plans Continue to Expand the Future of Tape Data Storage Technology

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- April 18, 2001 -- Sony Electronics today announced its current development plans for future Advanced Intelligent Tape ^™ (AIT) technology solutions, including making efforts to expand the AIT architecture to eventually offer nearly one terabyte of capacity in the 8mm cassette form-factor.

Surpassing past technological limitations, Sony substantially increased the recording density of magnetic tapes by over 32 times since the introduction of AIT-1 in 1996. The recently demonstrated storage areal density of 6.5 Gbits/inch² will enable the company to extend its long-range AIT roadmap to a sixth-generation member before the end of the decade.

This breakthrough in storage density was achieved by combining highly sensitive, Giant Magneto Resistive (GMR) read heads with a newly developed, high-density Advanced Metal Evaporated (AME) tape formulation that can be recorded at extremely low noise levels. The AME manufacturing process makes it possible to produce the thin magnetic recording layer required to achieve such high recording density. In addition, the AME process allows for precise control of the surface properties of the media, which is key in reducing wear on the magnetic head and critical for volume production.

Leveraging its 35 years of technological innovation in helical-scan magnetic recording techniques and mechanisms, Sony expects to continue to scale the AIT technology to address the explosive needs of data-storage management for the foreseeable future.

"Sony is committed to maintaining the AIT technology leadership by doubling capacity and data transfer rate about every two years," said John Woelbern, director of tape streamer OEM marketing for Sony Electronics' Core Technology Solutions Company. "The current AIT-2 products and soon-to-be-released AIT-3, together with a demonstrated roadmap to AIT-6 clearly shows Sony's ability to execute to the roadmap, validates the scalability of AIT and demonstrates Sony's continued strong investment in this technology."

"By executing to its planned roadmap, Sony is ensuring that IT organizations will continue to have the tools they need to manage the relentless increase in digital information," said Bill Britts, ADIC executive vice president of global sales and marketing. "ADIC is working closely with Sony during development and testing to ensure that a full-range of automated libraries come to market as the next generations of AIT drives are available."

Sony's next-generation AIT-3 drives are scheduled to become available starting in the third calendar quarter of this year, offering capacity, performance and reliability currently unmatched by any other tape drive system in its price class. AIT-3 will provide up to 100GB of native capacity (260GB with compression) and a 12MB/sec sustained native transfer rate (31MB/sec with compression) for a list price of under $4,000.

The AIT-3 design will leverage Sony's $34 million investment in high-density AME media production at its Dothan, Ala., facility to ensure an adequate supply of AIT-3 media at product launch.

As with the AIT-1 and AIT-2 market introductions, automation solutions using the AIT-3 drives and media are expected to continue to offer some of the highest capacities per unit for a given volume of space. With over 200,000 drives and over 20,000 libraries installed worldwide, the AIT technology has clearly demonstrated its customer acceptance.

The AIT-3 drives incorporate Sony's patented HyperMetal ^™ laminate head technology, enabling the doubling of track density while maintaining the highest data integrity. AIT-3 also incorporates Sony's innovative Memory-in-Cassette (MIC) drive interface system featuring non-contact, "smart-card" technology to further enhance access to data and media recognition.

Like previous generations, AIT-3 drives are fully read and write backward-compatible with AIT-1 and AIT-2 media, enabling users to seamlessly migrate to the higher capacity of
AIT-3 without losing access to or compatibility with previously backed-up data.