Europe links with Japan on storage standard

17 Jun 2002

Constellation 3D (C3D), a Russian-Israeli start-up company which has developed a three-dimensional optical storage technology, has formed an alliance with Ricoh, the Japanese manufacturer of optical disc drives.

Ricoh will promote the standardization of C3D's fluorescent multi-layer disc (FMD) write-once-read-many (WORM) technology. The two companies will also form a consortium to support the FMD-WORM standard.

C3D claims its FMDs will have more than 140 Gbit capacity on a disc the size and shape of a standard CD. Using a multi-layer structure, the company has developed a technique for recording, reading and storing information using fluorescent materials embedded in pits and grooves in each of the 50 micron-thick layers.