Submitted by: Eran
Source: http://www.c-3d.net/pressroom_frameset.html
Constellation 3D makes a new CD - the FMD (Fluorescent Multilayer Disc ) Video Disk which will eventually hold up to 1000GB at the price of a regular CD. A radical new way to read data
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.
Great, but will it be available to us, the end users ? According what we can read below, it's cheap, fast, and can hold a very very big amount 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.
Almost sounds to good to be truth...
