Posted on 06/18/2002 12:04:57 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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DVD-compatible optical disk hits 100 Gbytes By Mike Clendenin, EE Times May 24, 2002 (9:18 AM) URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020524S0063 TAIPEI, Taiwan — Forget about 100-gigabyte portable hard drives — too bulky. A physics professor at a leading Taiwanese university has led a group of researchers in developing a recordable optical disk capable of packing in 100 Gbytes of data and slipping into a pants pocket. That's about 30,000 of your favorite songs, or enough tunes to toe-tap to for a few months. The disk is compatible with today's CD and DVD technology, running off the same red laser pick-up heads used in a typical disk player. "That's the most attractive part of this technology," said Wang Shyh-Yeu, director of research at Ritek Corp., a disk maker that co-funded the study and will likely commercialize the disk in 2005 or 2006. To achieve the 100-Gbyte density target, the research team at National Taiwan University, led by professor Tsai Din Ping, used near-field optics — where the distance used for the interaction of the laser and media is shorter than the wavelength of light used to make the recording marks on the disk. Two layers were added to the disk to achieve the near-field effect. The first is a transparent dielectric spacing layer, about 20 nanometers to 40 nanometers thick, which keeps the distance constant in the near field. The other layer is an active layer, which will interact with the focus point of the laser beam, generate the near-field effect and then transfer the mark to the recording layer. Smaller mark Using a standard sized disk, 12 centimeters in diameter, the researchers drew down the mark size to about 100 nm, less than about 400 nm for today's DVDs and 900 nm for CDs. "Even with such a small mark size, we can still have about 35 dB on the readout signal," Tsai said. "If you check your DVD disk today, the readout range is about the same, from 30 dB to 40 dB. So that's a very good result because the mark size is much smaller than 400 nm but the carrier-to-noise ratio is still very good. That's not easy." Japanese companies and university researchers have also been developing high-density prototypes. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. developed a dual-layer rewritable optical disk last year that could store 50 Gbytes per side, enough for four hours of high-definition movies. It used violet lasers, however, not red lasers. Tsai said his prototype is ready to hit the market today, but Wang doubts the market is ready. The disk may be capable of recording dozens of Star Trek episodes, but there aren't any drives available to utilize it and no one is working on one. Such systems would also require a new chip set. "Today's technology still has a ways to go before this is needed," Wang said. In the meantime, Wang said Ritek should work on polishing the signal-to-noise characteristics on disks in the 40-Gbyte to 60-Gbyte range, which would still far outstrip today's 9.4-Gbyte maximum capacity for a dual-sided, dual-layer DVDs. Even next-generation proposals, such as Blu-ray DVDs, top out at about 27 Gbytes. Besides, they use pricier technology — they are based on blue lasers — that is not backward compatible with today's red laser standard. "The next two years will be very important for this technology," Wang said. "If we can get through the big breakthroughs we need, this will be a threat to Blu-ray." During that time, however, Tsai will be prodding his team to push the limits of density even further. Ritek and Taiwan's National Science Council are funding the research until February 2003 with $660,000 — the project started in March 2000. "Our goal is to make an even smaller mark size that will still be stable within the near field. To do this, we will have to find a nanostructure to make this happen in a much easier way," Tsai said. "One hundred gigabytes is not the limit; it is just the beginning. Our goal is terabit," he said.
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What are they afraid it might capture their souls, oh wait, all you need is a AppleII with 64K.
Back in the mid-80s, the RIAA actually attempted to outlaw digital music altogether, making it illegal to put music into digitized form, a little fact seldom reported in these post-Napster times, but true.
One hour of a movie, at full 35mm film resolution (not "digital cinema") theater quality with no compression, takes 1 terabyte of storage.
With lossless compression, a full 2-3 hour movie takes 1TB.
With mild lossy compression (you won't notice the difference), a whole theater-quality movie could fit on 2-3 of these 100GB discs.
So much technology is arriving ahead of people's perceived need for it.
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FMD: coulda been a contenda
We should also mention here a technology often written up alongside all of the above, namely FMD or fluorescent multilayer disc, from New York-based Constellation 3D.
Instead of the reflective coating found in existing discs, FMD uses fluorescent dyes to coat multiple layers of substrate within each disc. Current DVDs use only two layers on a single-sided disc because the reflective coating causes too much interference for data to be read back. But fluorescent dyes, which don't cause a noise problem, record data by emitting fluorescent light in varying patterns to represent 1s and 0s. FMD increases capacity simply because it uses more of the media in a disc of the same size.
Constellation was promising a DVD-sized disc that could hold 140GB of data using red lasers, or more than a terabyte using blue lasers. Last July, the company seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough when it signed a licensing deal with Warner Advanced Media Operations (WAMO), an AOL subsidiary and one of the world's largest manufacturers of DVDs.
| Last July, the company seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough. |  |
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It's not uncommon for big companies to have terabytes of storage. I used to work for one. Our tape library held 24 terabytes. Our nightly backups (differential backups) were running between 300-500 gigabytes and our weekend backups (full backups) were running 1.2-1.5 terabytes. I don't know who has the largest storage but I'd bet it's Lucasfilm. I don't know if anyone has petabyte storage.
No idea.
Yattabyte?
After Yotta- you get
Heckuva-, then you get
Helluva-.
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