[stevet]

Fluorescent Multilayer Disk technology is set to make DVD technology obsolete in the next few years, for more info go to http://www.c-3d.net or read below

LAS VEGAS - At last week's Comdex computer trade show, leading electronics companies like Japan's Matsushita touted the wonders of
their new recordable DVD drives, capable of copying nearly 5 gigabytes of digital data.

Meanwhile, in a darkened conference room across town, a band of emigre Russian scientists were showing off a new optical storage technology that
could soon make DVDs seem as primitive as the floppy disk.

Constellation 3D Inc., a New York-based company that's opening a
research lab in Boston, uses a radical new way of reading optical data. This
method could someday allow a single CD-ROM-size disk to store several
lifetimes' worth of information - as much as 1,000 gigabytes per disk.

Except for their size, the new disks look nothing like today's CD-ROMs.
They're clear as glass. Unlike traditional CD-ROMs or DVD disks, there's
no layer of aluminum to reflect the laser light.

With a regular optical disk, laser light at a precise frequency is shone onto a
surface that's marked with billions of tiny pits. These pits reflect the light back to a detector, which reads the reflection and converts it to a stream of digital pulses, which in turn are converted into pictures and sounds.

The Constellation 3D disk uses a layer of plastic treated with a chemical that
gives off a fluorescent glow when it's hit by a laser. The wavelength of the glowing light is different from that of the laser. So the detector is tuned to
ignore the laser light and look for the glow instead. The glow from billions of
pits is used to play back the data.

''Essentially, it's a very old technology,'' said Vladimir Schwartz, Constellation 3D's chief technology officer, who compares it to the way doctors have long diagnosed illnesses by injecting glowing dye into a patient's bloodstream. But this time, the glow is used to identify digital information.

Why do it this way? For one thing, it's far easier to filter out noise and distortion. Just tune your detector to read only the fluorescent glow and ignore all other signals. Besides, now you can laminate multiple layers onto
your disk and tune the laser to scan each of them separately, or even several
of them at once.

Today's DVD technology can only handle two layers of data. The scientists
at Constellation 3D say that they've gotten up to 10 layers in the lab, enough
to store nearly 50 gigabytes of data on a single disk. And they see no reason
to stop there. Schwartz says they can keep on adding layers until each disk
can hold a terabite (1,024 gigabytes) of data.

Constellation 3D has already earned or applied for more than 60 patents.
Now the company wants to turn its invention into a practical product. A
spokesman says it has signed a letter of intent with Japanese electronics firm
Ricoh to make disk players based on the technology, but Ricoh officials
couldn't be reached to confirm this. However, Japan's Zeon Chemicals has
agreed to work with Constellation 3D. Zeon will make the chemicals needed
to produce the disks.

Early versions of the new disks will be able to store 25 gigabytes of data.
And though no retail price has been set for the disks or the hardware to run
them, Schwartz says the manufacturing cost of each disk should be about
1.7 cents per gigabyte, or 42.5 cents per disk. The low price of the disks
will be vital to the system's success. ''If you are inexpensive, you are
golden,'' he said.

Better yet, users will be able to record on the disks, using a technology
similar to that of today's CD burners. So anybody with one of these devices
will have a cheap way to store unlimited amounts of information.

Texas Instruments Inc. is working with Constellation 3D because TI is the
leading maker of programmable digital signal processors, the ultrafast chips
used to process video and audio signals. TI wants to be the company that
provides the chips that will power these futuristic disk players.

Today's DVD disks can store only 4.7 gigabytes of data. That's enough to
play back a Hollywood movie with far better sound and picture quality than
an analog videotape. But it's not nearly enough to allow for the super-sharp
reproduction available with the new high-definition TV sets.

According to Steve Haddad, TI's director of advanced business development, you'd need about 20 gigabytes of storage to display a full-length film in high definition. That's why he's thrilled with the Constellation
3D process. ''This is the first time we've seen anything with the capability of
addressing that challenge,'' Haddad says.

Traditionally, optical disk systems like DVDs pump out data far slower than
magnetic hard drives. But the Constellation 3D system could change that by
enabling a radical new way of reading data from the disk. Remember that
the disk doesn't read reflected laser light but the glow of the disk material
after a laser has struck it.

Schwartz says it's possible to sweep a band of laser light across one of his
disks, and then take an extremely detailed photograph of the glowing dots,
using the same kind of technology found in today's digital cameras. Such a
photo would enable the optical drive to read the disk at up to a gigabyte per
second. This would allow optical disk systems to supplant today's complex
and crash-prone magnetic hard drives.

Indeed, the company hopes to use this method in a new kind of portable data storage device: a thin card containing a clear plastic window, a half-inch square. In fact, the window is a Constellation 3D disk capable of containing
up to 10 gigabytes of data.

This card would fit inside, say, a palmtop or laptop computer. With a sweep
of an internal laser, the device would be able to read the data on the minidisk. Add the ability to rewrite the disk, and such cards could be a cheap substitute for flash memory cards in digital cameras. A single mini-disk could hold thousands of digital images.

''The company is still quite a bit away from a real product,'' said Wolfgang
Schlichting, research manager for removable storage at International Data
Corp. But Schlichting, an engineer who formerly worked on multilayer optical disk systems, added the basic principles of the Constellation 3D technology are essentially sound. ''I know that it's possible. There's no magic behind it,'' he said.

Constellation 3D is just one of several companies working on ultra-high-capacity optical disks. Among its competitors are Reveo Inc. of Elmsford, N.Y. Chances are, only one will succeed in making its version the global standard.

But in a few years, it's possible that the old-fashioned hard drive could
disappear altogether from desktop computers, replaced by removable disks
of crystal-clear plastic.

This story ran on page C01 of the Boston Globe on 11/20/2000.
© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.


Published by: Boston Globe, http://www.boston.com

[john gibson]

this is very exciting news , i`m reserving judgement though and here`s why .
I would have thought that any fmd drive would benefit from being backwardly compatible with dvd , firstly this is in keeping with the technology anyway thats why dvd players can accomodate all types of media , vcd, cd,cdr and cdrw , any new unit would have to match this criteria for a manufacturer to have any chance of dominating in the all in one entertainment under your telly box, secondly, apart from the obvious advantage of the huge storage what else will you do with it ? how many films do you know of that require 50 squillion gigs of storage , carry on buying your dvd`s , your not in any danger...............yet
i`ve fired off an e.mail to the company via their web site and i`ll post any response that i get .

[Turv]

Phew - 1,000 gigabytes!!!

What term would be used for 1,000 gigabytes?

[Myth]

It goes, byte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte. 1000 Gigabytes is 1 Terabyte.

[DiGiTaL]

This is highly unlikely, as developments for DVD in use blue laser technology are still in progress. The studios are backing DVD, and lots of time and effort has been put into developing DVD, with big companies and corparations.

[stevet]

actually I'm more excited about the little cards they'll make with it than the disks, imagine 10Gigabytes worth of storage on something smaller than a credit card!

[Orbitalzone]

Yeah, one thing you must always remember is: never believe the sales hype.

Betamax was best, SVHS the successor to VHS, BSB the superior choice, Freebox umm, Laserdisc... oh and that Digital tape that is going to replace normal tape & being backwards compatible... the list goes on.

For every successful new product in electronics, there are probably 10 failures.

[john gibson]

I`ve had an e.mail back from the marketing manager from the manufacturer , he never went into any greatrer technical detail about the product , but I can tell you that these fellas mean it ,with 1000gig of storage available , the possibilities are almost unthinkable ,400 films per disc , if you take 4.7 gig per dvd as the standard , bloody hell, what if they release a multi disc player , i`ll be keeping an eye on their site .

[rezabelady]

Quote:

Originally posted by john gibson
the possibilities are almost unthinkable ,400 films per disc , if you take 4.7 gig per dvd as the standard

i wouldn't have thought that the vast capacity available would be used to cram in as much quantity as possible - it would more likely be utilised to offer the increased quality of hdtv

i think the portability possibilities - using a scaled down version of the disks (maybe md size - or even smaller!) - is possibly the most promising video use of the technology if they can make the components for reading/etc small enough to complement the size of the disk

[Digimonster]

I heard about something about this technolgy about 2 years ago. The DVD format will be around for a few years yet, VHS has'nt died yet......

Though i think this technology sounds pretty good

[Mark Hughes]

Heard quite a bit about this at the DVD conference last year, including a bit of a talk from one of the inventor/engineer types. Basically, they aren't even aiming it at the DVD market, but at applications like

* Digital Cinema - MUCH MUCH cheaper than banks of hard disks, more secure as a distribution method than satellite, and the capability to store a film, loads of subtitles and loads of soundtracks all on one disc - the studio masters one version which can then be instantly distributed to the entire world.

* High-def DVD - instead of blue laser technology (which is FAR more expensive than FMD technology, which uses a laser only slightly more expensive than a standard CD laser) and with greater storage capabilities.

* Mass cheap data storage - they reckon (although haven't been able to demonstrate yet) a re-writable drive would, in mass production, be very cheap because of the way the discs are made and written. Also because the data is so tightly packed the access speeds are very very good (the laser apeture can read off up to ten layers of info simultaneously, providing massive data transfer rates).

Regards,
Mark