Patterned media: A viable route to 50 Gbit/in(2) and up for magnetic recording?

The superparamagnetic limit on grain sizes may soon hinder progress in high density magnetic recording, and patterned media has been proposed as a means of overcoming this limit. Although no clear path exists for implementation of a patterned medium recording system, it is nonetheless worth considering some of the system-level problems and possibilities that would be inevitably associated with such a system. This paper examines some of these system-level issues, including implications for recording media, recording heads, and write-field pulse timing.