Pioneer and Memory-Tech develop Blu-ray compatible 512 GB disc

Japanese electronics giant Pioneer and Memory-Tech today announced they have jointly developed a high-capacity optical disc for data archiving with a capacity of 256 GB on a single side. With the use of double-sided disc technologies, capacity can be expanded up to 512 GB, claim the companies.myce-pioneer-memory-tech

The high-capacity optical disc for data archiving developed by Pioneer and Memory-Tech employs a guide layer-separated multilayer disc structure which separates the recording layers and guide layers, and by stacking eight recording layers on a single side of an optical disc, achieves the 256 GB capacity. With the use of double-sided disc technologies, recording capacity of up to 512 GB on a single disc is possible as well.

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The discs recorded using a compliant recording device can be played back on Blu-ray Disc compliant drives with some small (firmware) modifications.Devices able to record to the new format employ the same optical specifications (recording laser wavelength, objective lens, etc.), error correction method and encoding method as Blu-ray D drives. These device are also able to record to and playback existing Blu-ray discs. Discs can be burned at 4x speed (similar to Blu-ray 4x)

The technology works by eliminating the guide grooves (tracks) present in the recording layers of conventional optical discs and adopting a guide layer-separated multi-layer disc structure that separately establishes dedicated guide layers for the guide grooves. These changes simplify the disc structure which makes it easier to stack recording layers which in its turn is essential for expanding disc capacity. An additional benefit is that it also reduces disc manufacturing costs and improves manufacturing yields.

The simplified disc structure makes it possible to stack eight recording layers with each a capacity of 32GB, together good for 256 GB. By using two sides of the disc the companies claim they are able to double the capacity to 512 GB.

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Pioneer and Memory-Tech claim they also made a single-sided 10-layer disc in their labs already and that discs of 720 GB can be achieved without further modification of the recording devices. What’s more, by using new signal processing methods to increase the per-layer recording capacity and stack 12 or more layers, it should be possible to achieve more than 1TB per disc.

During the development process the companies were also supported by Japanese optical disc manufacturer Mitsubishi Kagaku Media, which will likely become the first manufacturer of discs compatible with the new format.

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