Toshiba and disk media manufacturer Showa Denko K.K. will establish two new technology development centers for hard disk drives (HDD), in an effort to accelerate the development and manufacturing of higher density HDDs. The companies will establish the "HDD Advanced Technology Center" and the "HDD Manufacturing Technology Center", both shceduled to open on July 16th. TDK Corporation, a pioneer in manufacturing magnetic heads, will also cooperate with Toshiba in the development work.

In 2004, Toshiba led the industry in introducing perpendicular magnetic recording technology (PMR), now the dominant technology for high areal density HDD. However the physical limit of PMR is widely recognized at around 1.6Gbit/mm2 (1Tbit/in2) and densities beyond that will require further technology breakthroughs.

"Toshiba, in cooperation with TDK and Showa Denko, is establishing an HDD Advanced Technology Center to focus on innovation in future generations of higher capacity HDD by investigating promising technologies, including energy-assisted technologies and bit pattern technology," the companies said in a statement.

By establishing a complementary manufacturing technology development center at the same time, Toshiba and TDK, expect to develop stable manufacturing methods for future HDDs.

Toshiba is trying to secure its position as a global leader in data storage by developing new generations of high density HDDs and by promoting optimized storage solutions such as Solid State Drive (SSD) and NAND flash memories including memory cards.