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To: Krowbar who wrote (6357)	7/24/2001 2:30:55 AM
From: alfranco	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8393

Del,wily,mred... Calimetrics ML has used the signal to noise ratio of amorphous to crystalline to so far achieve 8 levels of reflectivity that can be recognized by a read laser. The 8 levels are based on the proportion of amorphous to crystalline chalcogenide in the read laser's view window. This and other aspects of Calimetrics' system give almost a tripling of storage and data transfer rate on a CD-RW to 2 Gigabytes because each read/write cell on the disk contains more information with multilevel format for optical media. Calimetrics says the media on these MLdisks are 'fine-tuned' versions of typical RW media. Now if ECD can directly and incrementally adjust the amorphous to crystalline ratio up or down this 8 level scale without a full melt, that is modulate the chalcogenide alloy within the crystalline phase, then I would expect such "incremental phase change" to be faster still as these phase changes occur at lower temperatures 250-450C as was cited in patent 5,596,522 by mred significantly less than full melt temps of 600C+. But just how this incremental phase change occurs is well beyond my limited understanding for now. I do wonder if ECD has licensed this to any RW media manufacturers? So Del I agree that the OUM 'new regime' when/if employed on multibit/multilevel RW should allow faster rewrites and longer life for the alloy/disks. Generally, ML and non-ML optical disk density and transfer rates will also increase with upcoming smaller spot sizes via better optical focussing and shorter wavelength blue/violet lasers. Combining all these plus reduced track pitch is probably a roadmap to a fast 100 GB rewritable disk. Al

To: Krowbar who wrote (6357)	7/24/2001 8:09:49 AM
From: wily	Respond to of 8393

Del, further to your question the new chalcogenide material that allows direct overwrite and multilevel programing. That material should also allow faster rewrites and more storage for CDRW and DVDRW disks, no? the direct over-write and multi-level programming capability is old -- dating back to at least 1993 for the multi-level part and much further back for the direct over-write. The "old regime", which I believe all current and foreseeable products are based on is a two-stable-phase system, i.e., varying mixtures of amorphous and crystalline. amorphous/crystalline proportions: frontiernet.net modulated crystal structure: frontiernet.net My GUESS is they could do the latter with optical OR electrical, but it probably won't matter in our lifetime. wily