'CHANGING STORAGE LANDSCAPE IN SINGAPORE' SPEECH BYA*STAR CHAIRMAN, MR LIM CHUAN POH AT DSI 15th ANNIVERSARY DINNER, 23rd OCTOBER 2007 AT ORCHARD HOTEL

Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentleman, A very good evening to all of you.

I am very happy to be here to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of Data Storage Institute. With us tonight are many important guests including those who have flown all the way from Japan, Europe, Australia and the United States. I understand that about 400 of them are here for the International Symposium on Optical Memory and you have chosen to join us at tonight’s event.

We are honored by your presence.

Hard disks and its read-out heads have been in the news recently. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to ALBERT FERT and PETER GRÜNBERG for their discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance in 1988. Applications of this phenomenom have revolutionized techniques for retrieving data from hard disks with the first product out about a decade after the discovery and, with some modifications, continue to be in used today.

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I believe this award will spur many in the Data Storage R&D area to continue to work hard and make impactful discoveries.

In our own small way, this year, we are also honouring an eminent scientist for his contribution in shaping data storage research in Singapore through the National Day Public Service Award. The Public Service Medal is awarded to none other than Prof Mark Kryder. Mark has been working as a member, and later on as Chairman of DSI Scientific Advisory Board for the last 15 years or so. DSI's magnetic media and magnetic heads programmes all bear his trademark succinct, insightful and pragmatic approach. Mark, on behalf of DSI and A*STAR, let me thank you once again for your 15 years of outstanding contributions. I should also use this opportunity to thank all the members of DSI Scientific Advisory Board both past and present for steering DSI to where it is today.

DSI has come a long way. DSI was established in 1992 by Prof. Low Teck Seng. Back then, it was called the Magnetics Technology Centre, or MTC, focusing on mechatronics, servo and signal processing technologies. These activities were carried out in several buildings within the National University of Singapore. In fact, it wasn’t until 1997 that MTC was officially renamed DSI.

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By then, the scope of research has already enlarged to include hard disk media, read-out head and optical technologies, and therefore a name change was indeed appropriate.

The construction of DSI building started in 1998, and Prof. Chong Tow Chong became the Director of DSI.

In a report published in 1999 by The Information Storage Industry Centre, University of California, San Diego, DSI was ranked among the top five storage Research and Development centres worldwide, and the only one outside of US and Japan.

Here, I would like to thank both Prof. Low Teck Seng and Prof. Chong Tow Chong for their leadership in making DSI a world class R&D institution.

DSI moved into its present premise in 2000 and launched the network storage technology programme, positioning Singapore for the emerging network storage industry. Since then, 500 network professionals were trained in the areas of iSCSI, fibre channel, and file system.

The quality of DSI’s work continues to gain recognition.

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In each of the year from 2004 to 2006, a research team from DSI won the National Technology Awards. In 2004, it was for the invention of a multi-speed, multi-function optical disk by a team comprising Dr Shi Luping, Miao Shianghui and Mr Tan Pik Kee. In 2005, it was for their outstanding contribution towards ultra-low flying height technology at sub 3-nm that makes extremely high-density data storage possible. The team was led by Dr Liu Bo and includes Dr Zhang Ming Shen and Mr Leonard Gonzaga. This contribution was also given the Technical Achievement Award by the International Storage Industry Consortium in the same year. DSI was the first non-US research organisation to receive this award. In 2006, it was for the outstanding contributions to advanced micro motor technologies used in hard disk drives and miniaturized mechatronic systems by a team comprising Dr Bi Chao, Jiang Quan and Lin Song.

Over the last 15 years, DSI achievements have been remarkable in building up core competencies in critical technology areas that supported the growth of the data storage industry here.

CURRENT DATA STORAGE INDUSTRY Today, the data storage industry is an important component of Singapore’s economy.

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In 2006, Singapore has a 30% share of the global hard disk media market and produced almost 80% of the world’s enterprise hard disk drives.

There are about 10 multinational companies and 50 local suppliers in Singapore employing more than 25,000 people. The total output from the data storage industry was close to $12b in 2006 making up nearly one fifth of the electronic output.

We have a complete value-chain of hard disk drives and hard disk media players with R&D labs and manufacturing plants here in Singapore. And the breadth and depth of activities continue to increase.

Let me illustrate with the hard disk media industry. Five years ago, Singapore produced 20% of the world hard disk media. In the last two years alone, Hoya, Seagate, and Showa Denko announced the expansion of their hard disk media activities with new investment in excess of S$2.5 billion dollars.

By 2011, it is projected that Singapore will produce close to 50% of the world hard disk media. Along with this, it is expected that nearly 5000 new jobs will be created

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To support this growth, DSI will set up a new hard disk media infrastructure and facility to train more engineers and technicians, and at the same time, deepen the R&D in hard disk media technology.

CHANGING LANDSCAPE

However, the data storage industry landscape in Singapore, as in the rest of the world, is constantly changing.

Singapore, as you know, has become a regional data center hub. We have been able to achieve this because of our excellent physical infrastructure in terms of reliable power supply, excellent connectivity, and also our safe and secure environment. After all, the main concern of the enterprises is business continuity at an affordable price.

Today, we have many large enterprises who have set up their regional data centers, regional or global operation hubs and disaster recovery centers here.

The growth of the data centres industry will attract more network storage companies to correspondingly grow their activities in Singapore.

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ROLE IN THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE

DSI envisaged this need earlier. The Network Storage Technology Division focusing on data centre-centric issues was formed in 2000 to help support the growth of this industry. DSI also plays an important role in this industry in terms of manpower training and technological services.

DSI’s contributions to the broader efforts have made Singapore an attractive location for network storage companies like EMC and Fujitsu to locate here.

In fact, EMC recently announced investment in Singapore of more than S$250 million over the next five years as part of its Asia Pacific growth strategy and will hire 100 engineers for their new facility. Fujitsu Asia also worked hand in hand with A*STAR to jointly create the Storage Area Network Academy in Singapore, to train people for the challenges of operating state of the art data centers.

The network storage companies are also here as they are attracted by the proximity to Singapore’s enterprise hard disk drive manufacturers. This enables them to hasten the process of stringent testing, hard disk drive integration and qualification of storage systems, thus bringing a shorter time-tomarket for their storage system products.

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STRATEGY FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS

Moving forward, DSI will continue to partner the other government agencies to attract and anchor more top tier network storage companies to set up bases in Singapore. The focus, together with the partners, is to capture the entire Storage Area Network value chain. With more network storage companies in Singapore, we believe this will in turn expand and anchor the enterprise hard disk drive manufacturers, the hard disk media industry, and generate a lot of business opportunities for the local supplier base.

NEW HORIZON

DSI does not intend to stop there. DSI is evolving in the scope of technology development. For many years, DSI has developed strong capabilities in phase-change technology as a result of optical-storage research. Leveraging on these capabilities, DSI will put more emphasis in the future on the development new non-volatile memory, the phase-change RAM.

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The phase-change RAM may well be a new industry in Singapore five years from now !

And there is no better place to do this than at the Fusionopolis. Fusionopolis at One-North is the focal point for the Physical Sciences and Engineering R&D in Singapore.

By 2010, Fusionopolis will cover some 30 hectares and be a Science and Technology powerhouse with integrated capabilities from the research institutes of A*STAR's Science and Engineering Research Council.

It is a place where private industries and public research institutes will work together to foster innovation, experimentation and collaboration in a vibrant R&D environment.

I understand that DSI’s network storage technology division will move into Fusionopolis Phase One in the middle of 2008.

From network storage, to hard disk drive, to hard disk media and all the key components,

and

alternative

memory

devices,

I

am

confident

that

DSI@Fusionopolis will be well-positioned to further value add and grow the data storage industry in Singapore for many years to come.

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This evening, I would like to congratulate DSI on her 15th birthday. I would like to thank all the past and present scientists and staff of DSI for a job well done. In particular, I congratulate both Prof Chong Tow Chong and Prof Low Teck Seng for their very able leadership of DSI in all these 15 years.

Finally, let me wish everyone an enjoyable evening.

Thank you.

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