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To: alfranco who wrote (5976)	3/2/2001 10:20:27 AM
From: wily	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8393

al, great synopsis on RW and thanks for all the digging! Two things that stand out from your report are 1) the way you describe the roll-to-roll process for DVD's it sounds like initialization may be incorporated, which would equalize cost between -R and -RW. Is this what is meant by the statement "a process technology that both formats and coats DVD disks as part of a continuous low cost manufacturing system", i.e., does "formatting" refer to the initialization step? Or, even if it refers to something else, perhaps initialization is still included in the process. 2) I had been keeping my expectations conservative regarding the potential cost advantage of the process being developed, thinking that current manufacturers would undoubtedly be advancing the speed of their own processes, so that our eventual advantage once we went into production was a moving target. But, it seems that this is not necessarily the case... One question: what is "embossing" in the context of the disk manufacturing process? wily

To: alfranco who wrote (5976)	3/2/2001 2:14:16 PM
From: mred5x5	Respond to of 8393

Al, Excellent review. I expect that in the not too distant future there will be a marriage of DVD_RAM and MEMS (Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems). See one reference near end of message. Multiple MEMS fabricated movable mirrors have been fabricated onto a semiconductor wafer. I envision these could be utilized for focusing onto a somewhat STATIONARY CDRAM disk with a few thousand or more controllable mirrors (possibly peizoelectrically controlled) each covering a block area of the CDRAM disk for RANDOM ACCESS reading and writing. With the 10ns optics capability and the above multiple mirrors this could rival the electronic storage technologies in speed and is a going away competitor re storage capacities. ------------------------------------- lucent.com The micro-mirrors -- so small that about 100 of them would fit on the head of a pin Depending on the mirror angle, the light is either reflected back into the original input port or tilted by about 20 degrees and carried into a second output port. The mirrors, much too small to be made by conventional machine technology, were designed at Bell Labs and fabricated by MCNC, a MEMS foundry in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, using the Multi-User MEMS Processes (MUMPs). MCNC is supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Ed