Advance in blue lasers brings 10X write speed

Advance in blue lasers brings 10X write speed
Nichia Corp. of Japan has broken the speed record for writing to a recordable Blu-ray Disc. The company has announced a new blue laser diode that is capable of writing a double-layer Blu-ray disc at up to 10X speed. Compare that with the currently available Blu-ray and HD DVD burners that offer 2X and 4X write speeds.

Nichia's new blue-violet semiconductor laser diodes can reportedly operate at 320 mW (milliwatts), compared to blue laser devices currently available today that operate in the range of 20mW. "Writing speed is totally dictated by the output power," Steven DenBaars, professor of materials and co-director of the Solid-State Lighting Center at the University of California Santa Barbara, said. "The more power you have, the faster you can spin the disk."



He said a 2X devices can sustain a write speed of about 8.99 Mbps, whereas a device capable of 10X can write at 44.9 Mbps. Burning a full disc at 2X can take up to 50 minutes, whereas, 10X speed will cut that time down to around 10 minutes.

Source:
DailyTech

Written by: James Delahunty @ 23 Feb 2007 14:57
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  • 8 comments

  • i1der

    I guess technology is finally showing off!!!
    As a supporter of BD I hope it goes well and wish prices go down faster... so PS3 can finally Launch Up!!! and be this great system that it suppose to be. I guess price is the biggest issue at this moment.

    23.2.2007 15:42 #1

  • Rikoshay

    Can we move onto HVD's now? :D

    23.2.2007 18:28 #2

  • akkuma

    you would have to be a fool to wait on sony to put out a blue-ray player at an affordable price.

    24.2.2007 06:54 #3

  • rihgt682

    even with 10x speed it's going to take couple years before anyone will use Blu-ray or HD-DVD. I hope HD-DVD wins cause i hate sony. crap products that cost a lot of money.

    24.2.2007 12:41 #4

  • hughjars

    I wonder if these are like the current short life-span blue-lasers or the longer life-span blue-lasers that were mentioned a month or two back?

    25.2.2007 08:12 #5

  • Mr-Movies

    This is great news and my guess would be that they are affordable by next X-Mas, hopefully. Definitely the higher power laser diodes will not last as long, what there MTBF is one would have to look up the part number to find the MFG's specs on it though.

    Why buy this superior product when you can get a 3X or VMD... Tooo funny :D

    GO BD!

    26.2.2007 11:49 #6

  • hughjars

    Originally posted by Mr-Movies:This is great news and my guess would be that they are affordable by next X-Mas, hopefully. - This is just an interesting theoretical possibility from the lab.

    The article the states that they are at least 2 - 4 years away from commercial production cos it looks like they're going to try and combine the lastest innovations
    (which would make a lot of sense if the higher power spec shortened the laser life-span as would otherwise be logical).

    I'd also be inclined to hold off the excitement.

    I'd just wait on seeing this reach market and whether it delivers all it promises, it wouldn't be the first piece of BD-connected prototype equipment to make big claims that it either failed to deliver out in 'real life' or suffered very long delays.

    2 - 4 years could very easily become 5 - never.

    Quote:While the new high speed lasers will eventually improve the usability of blue laser storage, making applications such as archival storage on the devices more feasible, DenBaars described the innovation as more “evolutionary” than revolutionary. DenBaars was part of the team of UCSB researchers that recently announced another breakthrough in blue laser technology that could increase power even further.

    The UCSB team, led by blue laser inventor and former Nichia Corp. researcher Shuji Nakamura, recently demonstrated the world's first nonpolar blue-violet laser diodes. According to DenBaars, the technology could eventually produce blue laser diodes that operate in the range of 500 mW. However, commercial availability of the nonpolar blue lasers is still two to four years away, he said.    http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6202


    Quote:Definitely the higher power laser diodes will not last as long, what there MTBF is one would have to look up the part number to find the MFG's specs on it though. - As we can see from the article here ( http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/8543.cfm ) blue lasers currently have a limited lifespan (currently said to be 3 years) but that was assessed as a movie player not a combo movie and game player.

    Interesting how no-one even mentions anything about the expected life-span for, er, shall we say 'certain pieces of BD kit', hmmmm?

    Quote:Why buy this superior product when you can get a 3X or VMD... Tooo funny - Er, you can't actually 'buy this product'.

    No-one actually knows if or when it will - ever - come to market, it's an interesting lab story right now, nothing more.

    ......and how hilarious is it that Blu-ray has it's own version of 3X (BD9)?
    Which if your blinkers could only allow you to see has fantastic potential for the HTPC.

    3X offers 30mbit/sec & 9.4gb on an ordinary DVD9.....and you can only make a cheap passing dig about it?!

    Quote:GO BD! - No thanks.

    You can keep your over-priced, DRM crammed, clunky bulk data storage media and I'll stick with HD-DVD, the format specifically designed for video.

    Of course some folks might just take this as very good reason to hold off buying any Blu-ray products.
    They haven't even finalised the BD specs yet and now it looks like the hardware is very much open to revision.

    Too funny indeed. :P

    27.2.2007 02:34 #7

  • Mr-Movies

    I won't waste space doing your silly quote crap'ola but I would bet your wrong in the long run no matter what you've read and I happen to know they have been working with the blue-violet for sometime now. Even if the violet doesn't come out in the next year definitely the price on BD will drop. Which should help people decide to go this path, I hope it doesn’t turn out to be a VHS vs. Beta issue again where the better format looses.

    Just because they don't have the spec nailed down doesn't mean they can't implement the product, this is done all the time and is a normal mode of operation for most products out there. Look at the wireless N spec it was Pre N now it's Draft N pretty soon we will see N finalized. Just because it isn't finalized doesn't mean you can't utilize it. SCSI is another on going project that just goes and goes but look at all the businesses that still use SCSI and now SAS.

    Enjoy your HD-DVD someone has too. And that is a good thing I'm glad to see competition since it means lower pricing. In the mean time I'll still go with the better format until otherwise indicated. HD could still win out unfortunately this happens way too often.

    Shame on me I shouldn’t poke at you like this but man is it fun. :D

    GO BD!! :)

    27.2.2007 08:06 #8

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