Call/Recall, a military- and commerce-funded very high capacity optical storage research company, could be offering the world's highest capacity optical storage technology to license, leap-frogging 300GB holographic discs and offering 1TB in a DVD-size disc.

It uses a 2-photon recording process to record bits in a three-dimensional inside a disk's recording media coating. Multiple layers of information can be stored within the 3D volume with less than a 10-micron layer of separation. This effectively allows the equivalent of 250 conventional DVD layers to be put onto one disc platter. The roadmap lays out fivefold capacity increase through greater layer densities. This could enable a disc to store several high definition format movies.

It could also enable movies or equivalent data up to 50GB to be stored on 1-inch optical discs inside PDAs and mobile phone-format devices.

The technology has not been commercialized and product could be three to five years away. That delay before any commercialization could give InPhase with its holographic Tapestry discs time to deliver on its terabyte disk roadmap. Plasmon's UDO should also be in the terabyte area by then.

Story filed 01.07.07