I saw your post... thanks! Here's an article attempting to increase the speed.
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Gigabits Per Second Optical Storage System Development Funded; Call/Recall-led Consortium Kicks Off $6.8 Million R&D Program
March 24, 1999 06:15
SAN DIEGO, Calif., March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Call/Recall, Inc. (C/R), a developer of optical storage devices, announced today that it has been selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to develop a high-speed and high capacity removable storage system for optical media such as next-generation Digital Versatile Disk (DVD) systems and optical disks for computers. Optical disk media are recognized as being the most cost-effective means of providing reliable, high capacity, random access storage, but they do not yet provide the data readout speed or bandwidth needed for evolving multimedia applications. The DARPA program, called Fast Read-out Optical Storage Technology (FROST), is intended to overcome this limitation by developing an optical storage system employing a novel 3-dimensional, highly parallel readout approach permitting readout speeds measured in Gigabits per second (Gb/s).
Initial phases of the new program will focus on development and integration of the component technologies needed for a FROST prototype. These technologies are evolutions of multilayer, recordable photochromic media being developed by A. Dvornikov and others at C/R's Materials Division and related optical interconnects demonstrated by C/R's System Division, laser readout arrays being developed by the Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HWP), stacked readout electronics developed by Irvine Sensors Corporation (Nasdaq: IRSN), and data management algorithms and associated electronics design under development by the University of Southern California (USC). The initial FROST prototype is planned to have a 50 Gigabyte (GB) disk capacity with 2 Gb/s transfer rate. Subsequent versions are planned to lead to 100 GB disk systems with greater than 10 Gb/s throughputs, a several orders of magnitude improvement over both the 11 Mb/s access speed of state-of-the-art DVD systems as well as the 1056 Mb/s speed of the mature PCI bus.
"As the gap between interconnect rates and high capacity storage transfer rates widens, the transfer bottleneck between the processor and data storage is rapidly moving closer to the storage media. The highly integrated optoelectronic technologies to be developed during the FROST program present an opportunity to address new and emerging military applications and multimedia markets," said Dr. F. B. (Rick) McCormick, Jr., Call/Recall's System Division Head and Technical Manager of the new program. "These applications include video and multispectral surveillance from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and satellites, multimedia and virtual reality battle simulation and training, secure mission support data distribution, medical imaging, digital movie editing, and video and virtual reality servers, among others. These applications typically share the need for high storage capacity -- frequently hundreds of Gigabytes -- and data transfer rates measured in hundreds of Megabits per second to several Gigabits per second."
In addition to the system applications envisioned, the component technologies demonstrated on the FROST program are expected to have applications in transmitters for plastic optical fiber, laser printing, displays, pointers, bar code scanners, optical alignment, microscopy, adaptive optics, fast spectroscopy, fast digital photography, miniature cameras, target tracking, and motion detection.
Multimedia application technologies are forecast to have strong leverage on the global optoelectronics component market as well as being strategically important from a military sense. The Optoelectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA) forecasts explosive growth in the optical storage market from $6 billion currently to $50 billion by the end of 2010, mostly supported by video and computing-related products.
The DARPA effort, worth an approximate $6.8 million, including consortium members' contributions of $1.3 million, is being managed by DARPA program manager, Dr. Elias Towe, DARPA Electronics Technology Office. The consortium Administrative Board consists of Drs. Sadik Esener, Waguih Ishak, John Carson and Alexander Sawchuk, representing C/R, HP, ISC, and USC, respectively. DARPA is working with the United States Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome Research Site in the program, under the management of Mr. Albert Jamberdino.
Based in San Diego, California, Call/Recall, Inc., performs R&D in cutting-edge optical storage technology and maintains facilities in both San Diego and Irvine, California. It is a leader in the development of advanced optical disk heads and volumetric photochromic materials recordable by two-photon absorption using proprietary processes.
SOURCE Call/Recall, Inc.
/CONTACT: Call/Recall, Inc., 619-550-0596 ext. 102, fmac@call-recall.com/
/Web site: irvine-sensors.com
(IRSN HWP)
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