Scientists Invent 1TB Optical Discs

Dom · Sep 29, 2004, 02:57 PM

A lecturer in Photonics from the Department of Physics for Imperial College London has described a new method for potentially encoding and storing up to one terabyte of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD.

The Imperial researchers, working closely with colleagues at the Institute of Microtechnology, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, estimate that MODS disks would cost approximately the same to manufacture as an ordinary DVD and that any system playing them would be backwards compatible with existing optical formats - meaning that CDs and DVDs could be played on a MODS (Multiplexed Optical Data Storage) system.

Under magnification the surface of CDs and DVDs appear as tiny grooves filled with pits and land regions. These pits and land regions represent information encoded into a digital format as a series of ones and noughts. When read back, CDs and DVDs carry one bit per pit, but the Imperial researchers have come up with a way to encode and retrieve up to ten times the amount of information from one pit.

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Source: X-BitLabs

Sep 29, 2004, 02:57 PM	#1
Dom DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 12,940 Rep Power: 0	Scientists Invent 1TB Optical Discs A lecturer in Photonics from the Department of Physics for Imperial College London has described a new method for potentially encoding and storing up to one terabyte of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD. The Imperial researchers, working closely with colleagues at the Institute of Microtechnology, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, estimate that MODS disks would cost approximately the same to manufacture as an ordinary DVD and that any system playing them would be backwards compatible with existing optical formats - meaning that CDs and DVDs could be played on a MODS (Multiplexed Optical Data Storage) system. Under magnification the surface of CDs and DVDs appear as tiny grooves filled with pits and land regions. These pits and land regions represent information encoded into a digital format as a series of ones and noughts. When read back, CDs and DVDs carry one bit per pit, but the Imperial researchers have come up with a way to encode and retrieve up to ten times the amount of information from one pit. [Read More] ______________________ Source: X-BitLabs