Sony’s contribution to tape drive storage: AIT which means Advanced Intelligent Tape

Advanced Intelligent Tape or better known as AIT is a high speed data format which is used for storage of digital data on tape drives. AIT was discontinued by Sony in 2010 and Sony announced its collaboration with HP on development of DDR tape drive format. AIT used a cassette similar to Video8. Super AIT or SAIT is an advanced and a high capacity variant of the normal AIT tape drive. Both AIT and SAIT use helical scan method for data transfer similar to VCR device. AIT technology is primarily available in two physical form factors. One is AIT –8 mm which uses a dual reel cartridge tape drive and is similar to Sony's 8 mm videotape products and Exabyte's 8 mm data tape products. The second product is SAIT ½ inch form which used a single reel cartridge and was similar to DLT and LTO. Several generations of AIT technology are backwards and forward compatible with each other. This is one of the outstanding features of AIT technology.
Let us take a small peek in to many generations of AIT technology developed.
AIT 1: Originally, AIT 1 specification supported 25 GB of uncompressed data storage with a data transfer speed of nearly 3 MB per second. By extending the tape drive’s length, the data storage was improved in modified versions. AIT 1 was further developed to achieve speeds of 4 MB per second and also 6 MB per second and was called AIT Turbo. An economic version named AIT E Turbo was released with storage spaces of about 40 GB. AIT’s main competitor was DDS technology which was also one of the widely popular Tape Drive storage technologies.
AIT 2: The capacity and the speeds were doubled when compared to AIT 1. A new technology called WORM was introduced which meant Write once Read many. The turbo variant of AIT 2 had double the speed of AIT 2 and about 50 per cent more storage space.
AIT 3: This had double the capacity and data transfer speeds of AIT 2. The Ex version has 50 % more space and 100 % more speed than AIT 3.
AIT 4: Again, the capacity and data transfer speeds were doubled when compared to AIT 3. Different chemical composition was used for the tape for improvement in performance. This generation of AIT is not compatible with the previous ones.
AIT 5: The same double the capacity and speed factor of Sony’s AIT is repeated. This was the last generation of AIT.

By: Sandeep Mahanthi