Giant of the times

Hard drives are very important storage devices, used not only in personal computers but also in all walks of life.

Li Zetian thought about giving Seagate a heads up and asking them to develop magnetoresistive head technology. The benefits of magnetoresistance were discovered more than 100 years ago, but due to the small magnetoresistance change rate of the material, it has not been applied in practice. At present, vacuum technology has improved the purity of the magnetoresistance material and achieved a higher magnetoresistance change rate. The magnetoresistance effect is enough to be used in magnetic core memory, which can increase the hard drive capacity by more than 40%!

After Li Zetian visited Mango Computer Company, he couldn't wait to go straight to Seagate Company.

Seagate was originally a subsidiary of Apple, headed by Alan Shugart, the "father of disks", but the company was later split and became independent from Apple.

Alan Shugart was very surprised by Li Zetian's arrival, because Li Zetian rarely came to Seagate.

Li Zetian came here a few years ago when Seagate was developing CD technology.

Alan Shugart invited Li Zetian to the office. After the two sat down, Alan Shugart said: "Mr. Li, what do you want to drink?"

"A glass of water will do." Li Zetian smiled.

Alan Shugart asked his secretary to bring him a glass of water, and then turned to look at Li Zetian, "Mr. Li, you must have something important to do here this time, right?"

"That's right!" Li Zetian nodded and said, "Alan Shugart, I would like to know if Seagate is researching magnetoresistive head technology?"

Alan Shugart shook his head.

Li Zetian thought to himself, sure enough, in the previous life, Seagate also had the "Father of Disks" in charge, but the early leader in hard drives was always IBM.

"Then you might as well study the magnetoresistive head MR technology! As we all know, based on the magnetoresistive effect, its resistance changes with the change of the magnetic field. If the magnetoresistive element is connected to a very sensitive amplifier, the tiny resistance can be measured Changes, and the data on the disk can be read by using the resistance value to change with the magnetic field, thus achieving higher storage density!"

Alan Shugart's eyes suddenly lit up after hearing what Li Zetian said.

"Why didn't I think of using the magnetoresistive effect!!!" Alan Shugart looked at Li Zetian and couldn't help but said, "Mr. Li, although you are not a hardware developer, your vision is really shocking. It's really shocking. I’m impressed! If Seagate can develop magnetoresistive stab head MR technology, it will be able to greatly increase the storage capacity of hard drives and make hard drives smaller!”

Li Zetian smiled lightly and said: "I read a scientific document about the magnetoresistance effect a few days ago, and suddenly I thought that if the magnetoresistance effect is applied to the hard disk, there should be great potential!"

Not only is it promising, it is simply a milestone in the field of hard disk development! ! !

Alan Shugart knows very well that if the magnetoresistive head MR technology can be developed, Seagate will dominate the hard drive market!

"By the way, Alan Shugart, Seagate is still developing DVD, right?"

Li Zetian asked, since the CD development was completed, he had mentioned the development of DVD to Alan Shugart.

"Yes, Mr. Li, Seagate is also developing DVD, but it cannot be completed in a short period of time. First, we must improve the video encoding technology, and second, we must improve the hardware."

"In terms of video encoding technology, MPEG-1 has appeared, which is a video and audio compression format customized for CD disc media. However, DVD and CD are of the same origin and can naturally be applied to DVD. The transfer rate of a 70-minute CD disc is approximately 1.4 Mbps, MPEG-1 uses block-based motion compensation, discrete cosine transform (DCT), quantization and other technologies to optimize the 1.4Mbps transmission rate."

Li Zetian nodded and realized that MPEG-1 was adopted as the core technology by Video CD, which is also the core technology of VCD. With the current technical conditions, it is completely possible to produce VCD.

"Should we develop VCD now?"

Li Zetian suddenly fell into deep thought. The resolution of VCD is only about 352×240, and it uses a fixed bit rate. Therefore, when playing fast-moving videos, due to insufficient data volume, the macro blocks cannot be fully adjusted during compression, resulting in blurred video images. Blurred squares appear. In addition, the output quality of MPEG-1 is about the same as that of a traditional video recorder VCR, which is why VCD has not been successful in developed countries. However, developing countries, such as China, need it very much. However, China is not very wealthy now, and only a few people can afford a TV, let alone a VCD...

"It's better to take it slow!"

Li Zetian shook his head secretly, then looked up at Alan Shugart and said, "Alan Shugart, please continue."

Just now, Alan Shugart stopped when he saw Li Zetian was deep in thought.

"Okay, Mr. Li," Alan Shugart continued, "MPEG-1 audio is divided into three layers, namely MPEG-1 Layer1, MPEG1 Layer2 and MPEG-1 Layer3, and the higher layer is compatible with the lower layer. The third layer The layer protocol is called MPEG-1 Layer3..."

Alan Shugart introduced the differences and main uses of these three layers to Li Zetian in great detail.

Li Zetian's expression changed. Isn't the third layer protocol of MPEG-1 MP3? After CD-Walkman, MP3 can be developed to replace it. However, MPEG-1 technology is definitely not perfect yet.

"That's pretty much it for video encoding. In terms of hardware, our initial idea is to develop a single-sided double-layer high-density multimedia CD."

When Li Zetian heard this, he was slightly startled. If a single CD is not enough, then just make up the quantity. This is too perfunctory!

"Is this feasible?" Li Zetian asked a little unsure.

"It should be feasible!" Alan Shugart replied confidently.

However, Li Zetian is still unsure. He feels that Seagate still has insufficient foundation, especially in the field of laser technology, which is a bit behind Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic and other RB companies.

"Alan Shugart, I think that using laser technology to accommodate more capacity in the same recording area may have more development prospects!" Li Zetian suggested.

Alan Shugart thought about it seriously and nodded, "We will seriously consider your suggestion!"

"Ah That's good!"

Li Zetian took a sip of water, then stood up and said goodbye to Alan Shugart.

After leaving Seagate, Li Zetian thought to himself that Seagate seemed to be unable to go it alone and had to join forces with other companies to produce DVD standards. Single-sided double-layer high-density multimedia CDs sounded very uneasy... In the past life, the most popular ones were Blu-ray discs. This is the direction of DVD development!

After getting in the car, Li Zetian said to Dongfang Yuqin who was sitting next to him: "Let someone check which company is currently among the top in the world in the laser field!!"

"OK!"