Mark Kryder

Mark Howard Kryder
Born	(1943-10-07) October 7, 1943 Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Electrical engineer, researcher, chief technology officer
Known for	Kryder's law, magnetic hard drive storage technology
Notable work	Kryder's law

Mark Howard Kryder (born October 7, 1943, in Portland, Oregon) held the position of senior vice president of research and chief technology officer at Seagate Corp.. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University and completed his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and physics at the California Institute of Technology.

Kryder was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 1994, honored for his contributions to understanding magnetic domain dynamics and his pioneering leadership in information storage technology. He is widely recognized for formulating "Kryder's law," an insight from the mid-2000s describing the swift escalation in magnetic hard drive storage capacity.

Kryder's law projection

In 2005, a Scientific American feature titled "Kryder's Law" detailed Kryder's observation that the areal density of magnetic disks was advancing at a rate surpassing the growth predicted for semiconductor chips by Moore's law. At that time, typical drive density had reached 110 Gbit/in², marking a significant increase from approximately 100 Mbit/in² around 1990.

By 2009, Kryder forecasted that maintaining an annual growth rate near 40% in hard drive density would enable a two-platter, 2.5-inch drive to hold about 40 terabytes by 2020, with production costs close to $40.

Nonetheless, this forecast was challenged midway through the decade as density improvements decelerated. By 2014, the average yearly increase in areal density had slowed to roughly 15%, considerably below the earlier estimate of 40%. At that time, a single 2.5-inch platter typically stored around 0.6 terabytes, falling short of projections. Reaching 20 terabytes per platter by 2020 would have necessitated an impractical growth rate exceeding 80% annually.

By 2019, Kryder's law was regarded as obsolete; the pace of cost reduction for storage media had leveled off instead of continuing its previous rapid decline.

Awards and honors

Mark H. Kryder is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and holds fellowships with both the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He has served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Magnetics Society and earned accolades including the IEEE Magnetics Society Achievement Award and the IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award. In addition, Kryder received Singapore’s Pingat Bakti Masyarakat during their 2007 National Day Awards.