Behold the Terabyte Disc

 

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

The optical disc is supposed to become obsolete any day now, but maybe there's hope in store from the folks at Mempile. The TeraDisc is the first-ever 1TB optical disc capable of holding 250 Hours of HD Programming on a single disc . No word on pricing, and the technology won't be out until 2010, but it's great to see storage always moving forward.

"Existing optical media store the data through the use of light-reflective semi-transparent technologies. While increasing in capacity, even the newer blue-laser technologies are nonetheless limited to a very small number of layers. The partial reflection from the multiple layers leads to signal reduction simultaneously raising background noise and coherent interferences.

"Mempile's patented non-linear two-photon technology allows for 3D recording of transparent virtual layers on the entire volume of the disc. Mempile's recent demonstration proved that more than 100 layers could be recorded and read – showing storage capabilities of slightly less than 300GB over a thickness of 0.6 mm of active material. By increasing this active material to the thickness of a DVD, 1.2 mm, Mempile will be able to demonstrate the recording and reading of at least 500GB of data. Future optimization will allow the recording of 200 layers and of up to 5GB of data per layer." Source: Mempile via Fosfor

Bottom Line: More proof that HD DVD and Blu Ray are doomed. That or we have yet another format to contend with.