advanced intelligent tape (AIT)

Advanced Intelligent Tape(AIT) is a further development of Sony's 8 mm helical scan technology for data recording. With AIT, the table of contents of the helical scan tape is stored on a cartridge memory( CM). Data about the tape itself, initial startup, and current information is stored there. This allows a streamer to access information much more quickly, since it does not have to search through the entire tape when the cartridge is reloaded.

To better utilize the available tape capacity, AIT drives use Advanced Lossless Data Compression( ALDC), which enables data reduction by a factor of 2.5.

AIT tape drives come in several formats: AIT-1 offers a storage capacity of 25 GB per cartridge and a transfer rate of 3.0 MB/s. In 2001, the data transfer rate was increased to 4 MB/s and in 2004, in a turbo version, to 6 MB/s and a storage capacity of 40 GB. The average access time of AIT-1 is 37.5 s. In AIT-2, the data transfer rate and storage capacity were almost doubled to 6 MB/s and 50 GB (uncompressed). In addition, the MIC technology, Memory in Cassette (MIC), was introduced in AIT-2. As with AIT-1, AIT-2 is also available with a SATA interface.

The third AIT version, AIT-3, was introduced in 2001 and again doubled the storage capacity to 100 GB and data transfer rate to 12 MB/s. This was followed in 2006 by the Ex version of AIT-3, AIT-3Ex, which had a storage capacity of 150 GB and a data transfer rate of 18 MB/s. This was followed in 2005 by AIT-4 with 200 GB and 24 MB/s and in 2006 by AIT-5 with 400 GB and 24 MB/s. The magnetic tapes for AIT-4 and AIT-5 have higher storage capacity and abrasion resistance thanks to the AME coating, Advanced Metal Evaporated (AME).

Development of other versions such as AIT-6 has been discontinued. AIT drives are also available in the S version as S-AIT with improved properties.