14 DAY TRIAL // Even though the BDXL specification was supposed to be the one that defines the currently most capacious optical disks, TDK seems to have completely shattered that idea with the prototype it brought over to CEATAC Japan 2010 last week.
For those interested in a reminder, the BDXL specifications defines Blu-ray disks with arguably massive capacities of 100 GB or 128 GB.
These disks have only recently started circulating and require special optical drive units, as the regular ones cannot scribe data onto them.
Even more recently, however, namely during the CEATEC 2010 event in Japan, TDK became the first IT player to actually show off a disk that is far beyond BDXL in terms of just storage space.
To be more specific, the very thick disk, as Tech-On has it, features 1,024 GB, or 1 TB, which is more space than many multi-platter hard drives can brag about.
This large number of gigabytes is possible because the disk has 16 layers on each side and each of those layers can hold 32 GB.
Each of those layers as a light transmittance of 95.1%, while 16 of them boast transmittance of 72.6%.
Granted, this means that the prototype was about twice as thick as a regular Blu-ray 260μm disk, but the mitigating circumstance is that it supports the same beam aperture.
"According to the specifications of the Blu-ray Disc, the thickness of a recording layer has to be 100μm or less," TDK said.
"But the recording layer of the new disc is 260μm in thickness. And it causes the aberration of an optical lens," the company supposedly added.
Among the uses that TDK envisions for its newest creation are backup, home-use recording and broadcasting services.
Unfortunately, no orders have, so far, been placed for it, so it will probably take a while before this beast actually turns into a selling product.