Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) format is a leading tape technology designed and manufactured by Sony Electronics. It forms the basis of Sony's new SDX series of tape drives and media.

AIT tape cartridges feature an MIC–Memory In Cartridge chip (the brains) and Advanced Metal Evaporated (AME) media that has a pure evaporated cobalt layer designed for maximum capacity and longevity (the brawn).

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Technology overview

AIT tape technology has evolved through four generations: AIT-1, AIT-2, AIT-3, and AIT-4 and provides outstanding capacity and performance with a highly stable technology roadmap. AIT cartridges utilize MIC architecture, providing rapid time-to-data and multiple load points for partitioning data.

Native cartridge capacities for AIT-1, AIT-2, AIT-3, and AIT-4 are 35GB, 50GB, 100GB and 200GB (91GB, 130GB, 260GB, 520GB compressed) with speeds of 14GB/hour, 22GB/hour, 43GB/hour, and 86GB/hr (37GB/hour, 56GB/hour, 112GB/hour, and 224GB/hr compressed). Scalability is planned to a 6th generation product with native capacity of 800GB (2 TB compressed) and a speed of 345GB/hour (900GB/hour compressed). A 2.6-to-1 compression ratio is achieved with Adaptive Lossless Data Compression (ALDC) technology.

Features

MIC – Memory in Cassette. Each AIT cartridge contains a 16 kbit built-in flash memory chip that stores directory and operational information and speeds access to your data. The result is rapid access to desired data and greatly reduced loading and ejection times.

DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) Coating. The tape surface is protected by a smooth carbon coating that is nearly as hard as diamond and 20 times harder than metal oxides. The benefit is increased reliability and higher tape life.

AME (Advanced Metal Evaporated) Tape. AIT tapes use 100% pure cobalt for high retentivity. Sony uses a patented process for depositing a pure evaporated layer of cobalt directly on the base film without adhesives or binders. The benefit from this AME technology is maximum recording performance.

Advanced Lossless Data Compression. This technology provides substantially greater compression when compared to older compression algorithms. Combined with Memory-in-Cassette capability, these features make AIT the first tape technology with near-online class speed.