Pioneer Electron Beam DVD 302
wordboy writes "Pioneer Electronics just announced that they will introduce an electron-beam recorder for next-generation optical data storage. The electron beam is much finer than that of a typical laser so they are able to achieve densities of 50GB or more with a standard 12cm disc. But can it cook my TV dinner, too?"
Thing is... (Score:5, Informative)
Vibration, however, isn't the biggest hurdle to over come. Since it's likely the media will not be stored in a vacuum, this system will have to compensate for dust and other particles in a much more robust way than the current laser based systems.
Remember IO Meg's Jazz Drive? It sucked because the drive wasn't in a vaccume. That wasn't even laser based, it was magnetic media. Imagine how much of a problem it will be with subatomic particles.
But the truly biggest hurdle will be the price. The media will likely be based on platinum, and I don't see how writable media will be possible any time soon.
Re:Thing is... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
We're nowhere near subatomic here. In order to fit 50 GB on a disk, the bits will probably be in the hundreds of nanometers large. That's still much larger than atoms.
Re:Thing is... (Score:3, Funny)
OT, but this reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine about quantum computers. It took her a second to realize why I had a funny look on my face when she said "Imagine what you could do with only a handful of atoms."
Re:Thing is... (Score:2)
Re:Thing is... (Score:5, Informative)
The wave-partical duality refered to in quantum-mechanics says basically that since a photon is not a wave of constant amplitude (a picture [uoregon.edu]), it can behave like a particle in some sense (albeight a massless one). Additionally, particles with mass also have wave properties, but with extremely high frequencies.
All that said, not all particles are sub-atomic particles. The particles of potato-chip at the bottom of my bag are not sub-atomic particles. Likewise, nutrinos and photons, while they can pass through atoms and collide with or originate from them, are not subatomic particles. Aside from light being massless, photons are not sub-atomic particles because they are not "glued" inside an atom by electrostatic forces, strong nuclear forces, weak nuclear forces, gravitational forces, or any other kind of force. When an electron/other sub-atomic particle falls into a lower energy state and releases its excess energy as a photon, that photon leaves the atom. Hence, the stars, LEDs, light-bulbs, and all other light-emitting things "work".
Re:Thing is... (Score:5, Funny)
Yoda teaches physics.
-B
Re:Thing is... (Score:3, Informative)
BTW - gravity was included just to make the lis
Re:And electrons ditto. Need ION beams to be subat (Score:3, Informative)
If you want a beam to do etching on an atomic scale you need ions, not electons.
Electron wavelength turns out not to be a problem. Calculate the wavelength, or look at a garden-variety hydrogen atom - you can get sub-angstrom precision with a few dozen eV. Electron beams are typically in the many-keV range (though something small enough to fit in an optical drive's read/write head would likely be hundreds of eV).
Focusing is the b
Re:And electrons ditto. Need ION beams to be subat (Score:2)
Mod Parent Down: FUCKING MORONIC (Score:3, Informative)
An electron is less than 10^-18 m [cornell.edu] across. We're talking EIGHT ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE SMALLER. (Yes, the wave-particle duality makes size pretty difficult to measure. But c'mon, think about the relative-size issue here: what would be the point in considering an electron part of an atom if the electron were larger than the entire atom?)
What
Re:Mod Parent Down: FUCKING MORONIC (Score:3, Informative)
What you are describing are bound electrons (ie, in a Coulomb potential).
Electrons in a beam are free electrons, and would have an effective size limited by the uncertainty principle. So slower electrons would have an effectively higher beam width than fast electrons.
Actually, you can estimate the size of atomic electron orbitals using the uncertainty principle too. Back of the envelope calculation can get you the Bohr radius withi
Re:Thing is... (Score:5, Informative)
The announcement indicates that they are planning to start commercial shipments almost immediately. Pioneer has been working on this stuff for over 10 years already. You are probably right that this will initially be pretty expensive. Nevertheless, this is an important announcement, indicating that real progress on a key technology has been made.
As an aside, the Iomega Jaz drive was initially a good product. There were two main problems: they cut corners on both the drive and the media in later revisions; and they never owned up to the "clicking" problem, thus causing many people to unnecessarily lose data.
Re:Thing is... (Score:2)
The media has to be based on platinum? According to who?
Dust has never a problem with CDs, I don't see how increasing data densities will change this.
CD's have lots of vibration, that's why there is active filtering mechanisms that componsate to move the laser around. The same thing could be done with the electronc beam within a few wavelengths of light or less.
I don't remember any of IOmega's products ever being very reliable, it's not fair to compare new CD technologi
Re:Thing is... (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not necessarily true. Technology in areas of electronic production that limited the development of the laser disk in the 70's has improved, it's just not the same world. Stability should not be as much as a problem. As to price, sure it will be spendy when it first comes out, but more often than not, that has little to do with actual production cost.
Re:Maybe not... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe not... (Score:2)
Predicted in 1945... (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty cool foresight.
Re:Predicted in 1945... (Score:3, Insightful)
Electron beam/vacuum workaround? (Score:5, Informative)
This article from the Atlantic Monthly [theatlantic.com] has a recommended workaround for the problems of an electron beam for this kind of storage system not being well-behaved outside a vacuum.
Too bad the author didn't survive to see this technology work. Guess he was a bit before his time.Re:Thing is... (Score:5, Informative)
Once the media is written with this technique, it will be read in Blu-ray devices; that just takes a laser diode around 400 nm in wavelength. Such diodes aren't exactly common or cheap these days, but they are commercially available, and they're already being used in commercial Blu-ray players.
RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thing is... (Score:2, Funny)
Don't you have that backwards?
-b
Doctor Octopus (Score:5, Funny)
SEM? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SEM? (Score:3, Informative)
In really SEM's aren't *that* fancy, if everyone decided that they were the next must have thing, I can't imagine they'd cost much more than a plasma HDTV. Ultrasound machines are the same way. They
Re:SEM? (Score:2)
It still (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it just me, or is the wait for solid state storage a long one?
Re:It still (Score:2)
--D3X
Re:It still (Score:2)
As fast as my computer gets, as broad as my internet connection becomes, it seems I still spend too much time sitting here listening to the sound of spinning discs.
The price of storage has dropped though, as the 1GB RAM chips I bought recently were cheaper than the 32MB chips I bought 5 years or so ago (I can't remember the exact year). I guess I will continue to bide my time.
Re:It still (Score:2)
I think you're missing his point. The fact that solid state is *still* not low priced is what the grandparent was commenting as suprising.
Re:It still (Score:2)
Re:It still (Score:3, Informative)
If you're waiting for solid state to be as capacious as moving parts, you're going to be waiting forever; almost by definition, a moving part device will have more volume available to store data in then a solid-state device. (No matter how large your solid-state device, I can create a DVD-like disk even today that holds more then your solid-state device, for r
Re:It still (Score:2)
*sigh*... you're missing the point.... the grandparent was referring to *real* solid state storage, not 1-2 gigs. Figure out how much it will cost you (and how many units you'll have to get) in order to get 100 gigs of solid state storage vs. a 100 gig drive. Still ready to go to BestBuy? I didn't think so.
Re:It still (Score:2)
Re:It still (Score:5, Insightful)
Drop that "1-2 gigs" of storage back in time to yourself ten years ago and tell me it's not "real storage".
1-2 gigs holds damn near everything of interest to me in my life, including a book-length essay I spent three years on, all the digital photos I have, all the source code I've ever written, the source to all the music I've ever written, every website I've ever done, and all the misc. other data I consider critical, and would still have, well, nearly 1-2 gigs left over since all of the above clocks in at around 300 MB. Any storage that can back up all my critical data is real in my book, even though it holds only a fraction of my MP3 collection... this year.
wow! (Score:2)
If I had a video camera, I'm sure I'd want a lot more space. But I agree. "1-2 gigs" is a lot. About twice as much as my first hard drive, and more then enough to install linux.
Re:It still (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us remember a time when "real" storage was 30 megs.
Point being, yesterday's idea of "real" storage is avilable in solid state. By the time today's idea of "real" storage is avilable, today will be yesterday. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Whatever. (Score:2, Funny)
Solid state storage is overrated. Here at Infinium Labs we have gone beyond solid and liquid state for the Phantom console, and prefer to use something we call "vapour state."
I eagerly await the day when other companies will catch up to this revolutionary technology.
-- Tim
Huh? (Score:2)
In any event, non-solid state memory is always going to be a lot cheaper.
full article (Score:5, Informative)
Tokyo, Japan, Apr 2, 2004 - (JCN Newswire) - Pioneer Corporation and its subsidiary, Pioneer FA Corporation, announced today that they have jointly developed a high-precision electron beam recorder (EBR) by utilizing their fine-processing technology and equipment technology, which will make it easier to manufacture master discs for next-generation optical discs such as Blu-ray Discs. Pioneer FA will start selling the new high-precision EBR in early April, 2004.
In the conventional optical-disc mastering process, many disc manufacturers have been using laser beam recorders (LBR), which utilize ultraviolet (UV) lasers or deep-ultraviolet (Deep-UV) lasers as light source. Pioneer's high-precision EBR employs an electron beam as a recording beam to sharply narrow the beam diameter, which can realize even finer pattern processing in the mastering process, compared with LBRs.
The high-precision EBR also achieves high levels of record-positioning accuracy, thanks to the high-precision recording position control technology, which the Pioneer group developed when it started with production of Laser Discs. Pioneer's EBR can manufacture master discs for high-density optical discs including Blu-ray discs, as well as Discrete Track Media and Patterned Media - higher-density hard disks regarded as highly promising future technologies.
Since Pioneer's Corporate R&D Laboratories began basic research on a high-precision EBR in 1993, its results have been presented at academic conferences and study groups. In the meantime, Pioneer's high-precision EBR technology has been highly evaluated as a key technology indispensable for the development of next-generation discs. In addition to that, the demand for such technology has been growing. Accordingly, Pioneer has decided to launch this high-precision EBR.
Pioneer FA expects that the market will expand and plans on promoting the development of next generation EBRs to realize even higher-density recording together with Pioneer.
Main Features:
1) Stable electron beam emission with a large current by utilizing a thermal/field type emitter.
2) Large, high-density recording capacity of 50GB or more on one side of a 12 cm disc.
3) High track-pitch accuracy.
4) High productivity with a load-lock chamber
[Main Specifications]
Electron beam emitter: Thermal/field emission type
Acceleration voltage: 50kV
Modulation speed: 6ns or lower (10% to 90%)
Beam deflector: 2-stage, bi-directional, 10ns or lower (10% to 90%)
Objective lens aperture: 4 positions selectable
Beam diameter/Beam current: 80nm/90nA or more
Spindle motor: Vacuum seal air spindle motor
Rotation speed 60rpm - 2,400rpm
Substrate: Silicone wafer (max. 8 inches)
Focus control: Optical height sensor (range: +/-250micon)
Stage position sensor: Laser interferometer (resolution ability: 0.6nm)
"But can it cook my TV dinner, too?" (Score:5, Informative)
Not a consumer product (Score:4, Informative)
Their is no suggestion that this is a device aimed at the consumer market. They are selling this as a way to make the master disks used to press consumer disks.
Re:"But can it cook my TV dinner, too?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because TVs aren't in the consumer price-range
Even though your post seems to imply it is I who doesn't understand, I'll forgo the urge to simply say "you're stupid," and try to explain. There is a great deal of difference between scattering a beam across a foot or two of phosphor dots, relatively regardless of where it lands, and actually having to be INCREDIBLY precise at where you hit, AND calculate data from the reflection of the beam. It's the difference between simply shining a flashlight at the night sky, and trying to tell what's in a pitch-black indoor arena using only a pen-laser.
Re:"But can it cook my TV dinner, too?" (Score:2)
There is a reason most nice televisions have convergence controls, because pefecting electron streams is damn hard. A stream of electrons a half a milimeter off target doesn't bother the eyes too much while watching movies, but it won't do you any good when you're trying to write data.
A 'Box-Set' indeed! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not as portable, and certainly not as cheap to produce. A format like this would be a godsend for admins who do backups but as a common medium... Well, I imagine it might get as popular as something like Super Audio CD's or CD+G's for music.
In other words, not very much...
Re:A 'Box-Set' indeed! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A 'Box-Set' indeed! (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the big problem with any sort of electron beam technology outside of a controlled industrial environment is that they scatter readily. In a vacuum you haven't got any problems (over moderate distances) but even introducing air into the system can create significant scatter.
Electrons also suck at pentrating anything more solid than air. Electrons at, say, 10 kV won't penetrate more than a few microns into a layer of plastic; they'll travel an even shorter distance into a metallic surface. They'll be useless for high precision work after travelling several tens of nanometers.
Unfortunately, solid materials relatively transparent to electrons don't exist, and can't be made from regular matter. Electrons are deflected by charge--and matter is made up of charged particles.
This technique is confined to the factory. It is designed for 'pressing' master discs. Until the inside of your computer's case can maintain a vibration free environment (no fan, no other drives), tolerates high magnetic and electric fields for the electron optics (goodbye hard disk) tolerates high voltages, and can supply a good vacuum, and can apply a high quality coating after the disc is 'burned', this isn't going to show up on the desktop.
Re:A 'Box-Set' indeed! (Score:2)
Not really. You can already get DLT drives [buy.com] that hold 320 GB and transfer data at 32 MBps. At only 50 GB, you would probably need to swap discs, which is a real pain.
A format like what? (Score:2)
I don't like it.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don't like it.... (Score:2)
So, do you use double density or single density diskettes? By my calculations, you would need 35,556 1.44MB diskettes (ignoring space wastage). Hope you have got them well indexed!
Can it cook my dinner? (Score:4, Interesting)
Decay? (Score:5, Interesting)
What kind of lifespans are we looking at for this kind of media?
Re:Decay? (Score:2)
Question(s) (Score:2)
In that case, what do we, the users, need to read it? More accurate lasers?
Regardless, more = better.
If I Want a DVD Recorder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes VHS vs Beta simple, huh? Let's hope most of this gets sorted out before it gets to most consumers.
Re:If I Want a DVD Recorder... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If I Want a DVD Recorder... (Score:2)
Wrongo (Score:2)
Re:If I Want a DVD Recorder... (Score:2)
Don't know if UMD will be very popular outside of Sony products, just look at the Memory Stick, MiniDisc or Digital 8 tapes.
Blu-Ray is pretty new, don't think I'd worry about it yet.
Gackpth (Score:5, Interesting)
How long would that take to burn? Lesse... If we have standard 4x, that would mean 50gb in 20 minutes... which would mean, hmm..
50*1024=51200Mb
51200/(20*60)= ~43megs/second.
Wow. My hard drive can't even transfer over 10 megs per second to a second hard drive in my computer. I can see why this technology is still quite a far way off.... I would have to seriously upgrade my whole system if this came along even in a couple of years!
Re:Gackpth (Score:2)
Then you have serious issuses. Make sure the drives are on a different ata chains if possible. Also check to make sure you have appropriate DMA drivers installed. If you have already done this and the transfer between the two drives is still at 10 megs then you need to look into replacing the actual ata cables with new, non-rounded, non-cheap cables. Even on the same chain you should be seeing higher dr
Re:Gackpth (Score:2)
In any case, toying with the DMA and PIO modes using hdparm may help a bit.
Re:Gackpth (Score:2)
By the look of that, you've got both drives on the same channel. Move /dev/hdb to the secondary channel (probably has your CD/DVD/whatever on it).
Basically, you don't want more than one drive per ATA cable.
Re:Gackpth (Score:2)
The primary objective is to separate the drives. You *may* run into a problem burning from a hard disk to a CDRW on the same channel, but modern drives are probably fast enough and have enough cache to get away with it. If it does cause problems, just use the other drive for a source.
I had always thought it was bad to have the cd burners on the same ata cable. I think that was the case a long time ago.
Older, dodg
Re:Gackpth (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gackpth (Score:2)
only for creating masters (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
If you can create a better master, then your copies will be accordingly better. Even though the disk is digital, it is still a physical medium, which makes the accuracy of the original important.
What this thing looks like is a device that can do a "better" job than an optical system at creating tha
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Master discs still make no sense to me for CD/DVD. It's digital data. The original data is bits, which I can store in a mirrored drive array and back up several copies of to tape if I feel the need. I can make "perfect" copies from this source, and the source never goes bad. So why worry about the physical precision of a supposed master disc, which then has to be read into bits and written into another disc, when we can just read the bits stored in a hard drive somewhere and do the same?
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Ultimately, this means that future technologies can pack bits tighter on discs, as the discs can be made more accurately. In other words, more storage!
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Largely irrelevant news... (Score:5, Insightful)
This will probably never be used as the basis of a consumer recordable format - we don't even have consumer-level blue laser drives yet. Furthermore, we could realize a significant increase in capacity over blue laser by using UV lasers, which will probably be the trend after blue proves to be too limiting.
This article has practically no applicability to the average slashdot reader - it's not an "electron beam dvd" as the title of the article suggets. Editors should really read the articles they post...
Ummm actually... (Score:2)
Well, I'm no physics wiz but as a matter of fact... YES! [cplire.ru]
Self-building computer (Score:3, Funny)
No, but put a silicon blank in it and it can etch you a new CPU.
Case or Caddie? (Score:5, Insightful)
CDs get bad enough skipps, DVDs are worse, what's going to happen to this next generation media when it gets scratched? Will a scratch obliterate several hundred megs? At some point error correction just doesn't cut it, a protective caddie is a necessity here.
As for HD-DVD or Blu-ray or this e-beam stuff, if one doesn't use a caddie, don't support it. We shouldn't have our media ruined if they don't get treated perfectly. If I was one for conspiracy theories, I'd think DVD is one to get us to buy the same thing over and over since the discs are so fragile.
Re:Case or Caddie? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean like this [amazon.com].
The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition)
The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Widescreen Edition)
The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Full Screen Edition)
The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition Collector's Gift Set)
The Lord Of The Rings - The Motion Picture Trilogy (Widescreen Edition)
The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring / The Two Towers (Widescreen Editions) (2-Pack)
The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Super Turbo Championship Edition)
Dinner? How about some pancakes (Score:2, Offtopic)
Bring back the CRT. (Score:5, Funny)
This world will look like the set of Brazil before we know it.
coming around full circle (Score:2)
Star Wars Trilogy Electronic Beam Edition (Score:4, Funny)
X-Ray machine anyone? (Score:3, Funny)
Acceleration voltage: 50kV
So are we in the X-ray range yet? Will the drive be enclosed with lead and have a prominent sticker on it WARNING: Radiation Hazard ?
Re:X-Ray machine anyone? (Score:2)
Hmmm... and that's why the radiation that plutonium emits is harmless (beta radiation = electrons). Incidentally, any electron beam traveling in an curved path emits radiation including x and gamma rays depending on the parameters. Likewise, stopping an electron beam with something like a metal block gives you x-rays if the electrons are travelling quickly enough.
Re:X-Ray machine anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
Betas are blocked by your skin, after all.
This technique is for MASTER discs (Score:5, Informative)
It is essentially the same tech that the semiconductor industry has been using for years (decades?) to create masks for photolithography.
I can't imagine how an electron beam recording system would make it into a consumer product. These systems have essentially the same precision technology that scanning electon microscopes have, i.e. they ain't cheap. Plus, it's not just a matter of throwing a master disc "blank" into the unit and pressing go. There are several process steps.
Electron bean just for mastering (Score:2, Informative)
"Pioneer's EBR can manufacture master discs for high-density optical discs including Blu-ray discs, as well as Discrete Track Media and Patterned Media - higher-density hard disks regarded as highly promising future technologies."
Not a computer peripheral (Score:5, Informative)
Note also that the master disk must be written in a hard vacuum (~10^-7 Torr). I suspect the system is actually a modified electron microscope, similar to widely available Focused Ion Beam (FIB) semiconductor processing equipment.
Dr. Null
Whoa... Time Out! (Score:4, Informative)
If I'm not mistaken the article is talking about media mastering, not playback. There's a BIG difference there. Also, the article mentions that the market is expanding, which implies that they have either already sold some units or plan to do so real soon, not 10 years out as someone claimed.
Another point: If you read the specs attached to the article you'll notice the phrase "Vacuum seal air spindle motor". Unless they're referring to something different than what I've worked with, that means getting a rotating mechanism into a vacuum chamber using either a magnetic coupled drive shaft or a rotary vacuum seal.
And for those of you wondering how an electron beam DVD device is going to work with your current PC: Well, the simple answer is that it won't. Not unless you have a vacuum chamber sitting next to your PC and bunch of multi-stage pumps and gas traps sitting underneath. Electrons don't remain focused and usable for very long outside of a vacuum. They tend to either dissapate or show up as sparks or arcs.
And, lastly, to answer someone's question about a homemade SEM. Yeah, you can build one, and it's been discussed [foresight.org] before. It's really not that hard, just expensive (you'll need the previously mentioned vacuum pumps and assorted plumbing, and a couple of precision power supplies in the 10 to 50KV range will come in handy as well).
The REAL Problem - Field Emission! (Score:3, Informative)
No, it's not the electron wavelength which, by the way, is only weakly dependent on beam energy (the 50 keV of kinetic enery is still small potatoes compared to the 511 MeV electron rest mass - back to physics 101 for you).
The REAL problem is building the electron emitters. In order to focus the electron beam to a very fine spot, the initial supply of electrons has to be very monoenergetic (monochromatic in optics parlance). This is because charged particle optics are very susceptible to chromatic abberration, where the focal length of a lens is a function of wavelength. Furthermore, since charged particle optics rely exclusively on electromagnetic fields, they cannot leverage all the trickery used in conventional optics to circumvent this effect.
Well, there are a couple of ways to obtain the initial monochromatic source of electrons. First, you can use a traditional thermionic electron emitter (think hot wire) at the input of a crossed field velocity selector (look it up). Unfortunately, that is very inefficient with respect to beam flux (or "luminosity").
The other primary option is to use a cold electron emission source such as "field emission" in which electrons quantum mechanically tunnel out of the cathode under the influence of a very strong electric field. This emission mechanism is specifically mentioned in the article. Typically, this requires an extremely sharp cathode (10s of nanometers), like an etched wire, to achieve the required electric fields at its sharpest point using reasonable voltages (10s - 100s of kV).
Now, here's the tricky bit. With such a high & spatially inhomogeneous electric field, every polarizable particle (like gas molecules) in the chamber will be drawn to the region of highest field strength via a process call dielectrophoresis (the same effect used to separate DNA strands in gel sequencing). Since the highest field region is also the very small tunneling region producing the beam, even a single gas molecule can "poison" the emitter by adsorbing to the surface and shutting down the field emission process.
Even in extremely high vacuum (10^-10 torr and better) the lifetime of "standard" field emitters is typically much too short for industrial purposes. One solution is too build an array of microfabricated emitters for redundancy (the so-called "Spindt cathodes") but that involves its own challenges. Add in the outgassing that is sure to arise from the "burning" process and you've got quite a mess.
Personally, I'd be very interested to know what the mean lifetime of their field emitters is and how is it achieved. Increasing this lifetime, especially for microfabricated emitters, is one of the great challenges in vacuum microelectronics. If solved, the field emission display, essentially an honest-to-goodness flat-panel CRT, could become a viable technology to compete with LCDs, plasma and emergent technologies like large-format OLEDs.
Woops (Score:4, Interesting)
Source: Blu-ray Disc [blu-ray.com]
The beauty is, as opposed to the "not until 10yrs"-statements, you can buy a recorder [blu-ray.com] from sony (BDZ-S77) already in Japan.
When will I be able to buy a Blu-ray Disc recorder? [blu-ray.com]
JVC [blu-ray.com], Maxell [blu-ray.com], Maxell TDK [blu-ray.com], mitsubishi [blu-ray.com], sony [blu-ray.com] and many others are working on this...
HP and DELL were accepted into the group to help further develop the format for PC data storage in 2004. (which means, this is going to be widespread in a few years.)
Holography may have some better solutions (Score:3, Interesting)
#1:This makes possible capacities of more than 1,000 GB
on a CD disk format.
#2:Consequently, holography provides a substantially faster
data transfer rate from a single head, surpassing 100 MB/sec.
By comparison, DVD technology provides a data transfer rate
of only 5 MB/sec.
Thanks,
Ex-MislTech
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, this announcement directly relates to the manufacture of master discs for such "other" methods (specifically, Blu-ray). This press release is not announcing another new format in the least (for now), just a new tool for use in the mastering process.
Election beams? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One use for 50GB (Score:3, Funny)
Re:One use for 50GB (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One use for 50GB (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One use for 50GB (Score:2)
6 hours? That many? What'd they do, add commercials to the discs?
Re:wow (Score:2)
Scene 10 years ago: Wow! 640MB of removable storage on a disc! I could nearly fit my whole hard drive on ONE disc and store it somewhere!