Advanced Intelligent Tape


Advanced Intelligent Tape is a discontinued high-speed, high-capacity magnetic tape data storage format developed and controlled by Sony. It was introduced in 1996 to utilise Advanced Metal Evaporated technology. It competed mainly against the DLT, LTO, DAT/DDS, and VXA formats. AIT uses 8mm tape in a cassette similar to Video8. Super AIT is a higher capacity variant using wider half inch tape in a larger, single-spool cartridge. Both AIT and SAIT use the helical scan method of reading and writing to the tape.
Image:AIT tapes.jpg|thumb|250px|AIT tapes.

Form factors

AIT technology was available in two form factors.
  • AIT – 8 mm, dual reel cartridge, similar to Sony's 8 mm videotape products and Exabyte's 8 mm data tape products.
  • SAIT – 1/2", single reel cartridge, similar to DLT and LTO.
In March 2010, Sony announced the discontinuation of the AIT product line, and renewed collaboration with Hewlett-Packard on further development of the DDS tape format,

Compatibility

One of the most compelling features of the AIT format is that many generations are both backwards and forwards compatible. This allows multiple generations of tape drives to both read and write to multiple generations of tape media.

AIT generations

AIT-1

  • Original specification's data capacity up to 25 GB native and up to 65 GB compressed, with a data transfer speed of 3 MB/s.
  • Extended length tape, introduced in 1999 gave additional capacity, 35 GB.
  • Speed increased to 4 MB/s in 2001.
  • Turbo variant, introduced in 2004, is 50% faster and holds 40 GB.
  • A budget version, AIT-E Turbo, was also introduced in 2004 to compete with DDS.
  • SATA version of AIT-1 Turbo available in 2006.

    AIT-2

  • Doubled capacity and transfer speed
  • WORM technology introduced
  • Turbo variant is 100% higher capacity, 100% faster
  • Turbo variant introduced R-MIC technology
  • SATA version of AIT-2 Turbo available in 2006
  • Higher capacity TAIT2-80N 80Gb native.
GenerationAIT-3AIT-3ExAIT-4AIT-5AIT-6
Release date2001200620052006cancelled
Native Capacity 100150200400800
Max Speed 12182424
EncodingExtended TC-PRMLTurbo-coded modulationTurbo-coded modulation
Tape Length 230246246
Tape Thickness 5.34.84.8
WORM CapableYESYESYESYES

AIT-3

  • Doubled capacity and transfer speed
  • Ex variant is 50% higher capacity, 50% faster

    AIT-4

  • Doubled capacity and transfer speed
  • New tape formulation, AME-2
  • Not compatible with previous generations

    AIT-5

  • Available September 27, 2006
  • Announced July 2006, hardware and media expected "in the fall."
  • Doubled capacity, maintained transfer speed.
  • Backwards compatible with AIT-3, AIT-3Ex, AIT-4
  • New tape formulation, AME-3, which uses finer Cobalt particles resulting in SNR gain of 1 dB compared with AIT-4/AME-2.
  • A switch to GMR head technology.

    SAIT generations

GenerationSAIT-1SAIT-2SAIT-3SAIT-4
Release date20032006cancelledcancelled
Native Capacity 50080020004000
Max Speed 3045120240
Tape Length 600640
Tape Thickness 8.6

SAIT-1

  • Highest capacity tape cartridge from 2003 to 2006. Displaced by DLT-S4.
The AIT format was developed and is controlled by Sony.

SAIT-2

Released in 2006 by Sony, available only in libraries, 800 GB native and 45 MB/s sustained transfer rate.

Technical features

AME

Advanced Metal Evaporated is a different formulation of tape media.

MIC

Memory-in-Cassette
is a 16-64KB memory chip in the cartridge that keeps relevant information about the data on the tape to allow quicker access. The drive did not have to read the whole tape until it came across the file required like a file index.

R-MIC

Remote - Memory in Cassette
Like MIC except it does not require physical contact.

WORM

functionality, useful for archive keeping.