New Generation Blu-ray Disc: 1TB 1TB

At the Createc Japan 2010 exhibition held in Japan last week, TDK Corporation came up with a brand-new CD storage solution. The storage capacity of one CD is 1TB, which is 21 times that of a dual-layer BD-R Blu-ray Disc. The single-layer BD- 41 times that of R, and 218 times that of DVD.

Consistent with many companies' development of Blu-ray technology, TDK's next-generation optical discs also use multi-layer technology to double the storage capacity. The disc has a total of 16 storage layers, and the front and back sides of each layer each have a capacity of 32 GB, a total of exactly 1024 GB.

To make so many layers of data on a thin disc, the light transmittance of the disc material is the key. From the naked eye, this disc is almost transparent. TDK uses new materials, with a transmittance of 95.1% for the first data layer and 72.6% for the 16th layer.

TDK company said that this new material has actually been applied in Blu-ray BD products, so it has been tested in reliability, durability and other aspects. In addition to platters, many technologies of the optical disc system are also common with Blu-ray discs. For example, the time it takes for an optical head to read a data layer is the same as that of a Blu-ray disc.

Currently, the read error rate of this 16-layer 1TB disc is on the order of 1x10-5 to 1x10-4, which has reached the commercialization standard. The only remaining problem is the thickness. According to the Blu-ray Blu-ray Disc specification, the data layer thickness should be less than 100 microns, but this new technology disc has reached 260 microns, which can cause the laser head to focus.

TDK said that as long as the disc manufacturer is willing, the disc can be quickly commercialized, in the future will be available for home audio and video recording, backup and broadcast television business media.