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Prototype 150GByte Read-Only Disk Demonstrated

Posted by Hemos on from the i-want-a-mp3-drive-for-it dept.

Generic Specialist writes "A fully working prototype of a 150GByte read-only disk has been demonstrated by C3D Inc. The clever part is their "Fluorescent Multilayer Disk" technology. Rather than having only one or two layers (as per CD-ROMs, DVD) these new disks have 10 layers, which can be read simultaneously giving data transfer rates exceeding 1 gigabyte per second. Now, if only they could produce a read-write version... "

2 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Mass storage. by Matt2000 · · Score: 5

    In a related press release, Microsoft corp announced support for the emerging C3D data format:

    "Microsoft corp has been waiting for portable storage capacities to catch up with our dreams for the desktop. We have already developed a 74 GB talking paperclip that can help users with letter writing and swear in spanish.

    With current storage technologies we are severely limited in what we can do. A simple 28 MB singing elephant is not much good when it only knows one song."

    When asked whether Microsoft CEO Bill Gates' android brain will accept the new disc format, company officials said "We have no idea what you're talking about."

    They then smiled and winked before hiding under the table and claiming they were invisible.

    Hotnutz.com

    --

  2. Speed is big payoff, but smells like BS by LinuxParanoid · · Score: 5

    Who cares about 150 GB capacity; we'll have that in a few years.

    But I haven't heard *any* device manufacturer talking about speeds of 1 GByte/sec from a single device in any timeframe. Why not? Well, that's about 100x faster than today's hard disks (10 MB/sec is reasonable for most 7200 RPM disks, with some 10,000 RPMs getting up to 25 MB/sec peak performance.) And way faster today's optical media: a 40x CD-ROM is around 6 MB/sec peak, implying a 200x speed jump.

    Now I can see how 10 layers might get you a quick 10x jump in capacity, and you could squeeze out another 3x over today's 5 GB DVD solutions if you were careful. But I don't see how 10 layers translates into a 200x speedup.

    Neither PCI, SCSI, FC-AL, nor the IDE busses used for connecting disks to CPU/memory are built for 1 GByte/sec speeds, although Intel's future "System I/O" should handle it.

    The transfer rate is so high, I'm strongly tempted to not believe any of it. Note that absolutely no timeframe is attached to the availability of the technology, a suspicious sign at best.

    Doubtfully yours,
    --LP