Tuesday, April 28, 2009

General Electric announces 500 Gb optical disc !


This is the latest announcement from General Electric! the development of a new generation of optical (micro-holographic) discs to store up to 500 Gb of data.
This huge technological breakthrough is intended for the professional storage market but General Electric says it can land in the consumer market as well, portable players will even be compatible with existing DVD and Blu-ray discs!

This new technology relies on the three dimensional storage of information on the disc instead of tradition on-surface disc burning, this allows the reach of unprecedented data density on the disc.

The amount of data (500Gb) that this monster optical disc is capable of storing is equivalent, to a thousand CDs, a hundred DVDs, or 20 Blu-rays!!

A critical challenge for the research team, which has been working hard on this project since 2003, has been to find the right materials and techniques so that smaller holograms reflect enough light for their data patterns to be detected and retrieved..

More infos on this remarkable breakthrough can be found in this New York Times page.

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