Super density DVDs by 2010 from Philips

Rethink IT, Nov, 2004

A few news pieces have emerged due to a filing made by the Imperial College London, which shows a method for storing up to 1,000Gb (or one terabyte) on a single optical disk.

The work comes out of the European Commission (Super Laser Array Memory) SLAM project, which has partners that include most notably Philips, as well as various other European universities.

This project is more or less complete and received EC funding from 2001 to 2004 to try to come up with better recording techniques than even the blue lasers found in the Blu ray and High Definition DVD consortia.

The point of the research is that narrowing the laser by using different frequencies of light more or less ends with the blue laser, and there is little more than can be done in that direction. Blue laser will take us to around 100Gb per disk.

But using Multiplexed Optical Data Storage (MODS), a device can store more than one piece of information when a laser burns a pit in a reflective surface.

One way of allowing more than one piece of information per pit is to make the storage medium polarization sensitive and then vary the state of polarization of the writing beam.

It is thought that it could be possible to change the structure of polarization in the vicinity of the focus at will, which would allow as many as 100-200 bits of information to be written on a single pit.

The funding has now run out and the reason for the paper is the completion of the work to date. However with more funding, something that Philips might think is advantageous to supply, in return for intellectual property rights, it's thought that a follow on disk for the Blue laser disks could be out as soon as 2010, with 10 times the density.

The research will be directed towards optical media that can be produced cheaply in large volumes using moulding and prerecorded formats.