Sony and Panasonic join forces to develop the Archival Disc standard for optical discs

With capacities from 300 GB to 1 TB, in the future, this standard is intended for next-generation professional optical disks with the aim of expanding the digital data storage business in the long term.

Sony y Panasonic today announced the development of Archival Disc technology, a new standard for next-generation professional optical discs, with the goal of expanding the long-term digital data storage business.

Optical discs have excellent environmental protection properties, such as dust and water resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity during storage. They also enable cross-generational compatibility between different formats, ensuring continuous reading of data even as formats evolve.

All this makes them a perfect sturdy support for long-term storage of content. Recognizing that optical discs will need to accommodate greater storage volumes in the future, especially given the anticipated growth of the file market, Sony and Panasonic have participated in the joint development of a standard for next-generation professional optical discs.

Both Sony and Panasonic want to launch systems with a recording capacity of 300 GB per disc starting in mid-2015. Additionally, both companies want to leverage their respective technologies to further expand recording capacity to 500 GB and 1 TB per disc.

Large volumes of data

Recently, archiving capabilities have increased significantly in the film industry, as well as in cloud data centers, where advances in network services have triggered growth in data volume.

Both Sony and Panasonic have excellent experience in developing Blu-ray Disc technology. Both companies plan to actively promote this standard for next-generation high-capacity optical drives in professional environments to provide an effective solution to protect valuable data in the future.

In the development of the Archival Disc, crossover cancellation, a signal processing technology, as well as Partial Response Maximum Likelihood (PRML), a development that allows signal processing, improving playback performance by allowing interference between symbols, has played a determining role. In this way, it is possible to achieve greater capacity and higher quality in the playback signal.

Main specifications of Archival Disc

• Disc size (type): 300 GB (single recording)
• Optical parameter: Wavelength λ=405 nm (nanometers), numerical aperture NA=0.85
• Disc structure: Double-sided disc (3 layers/side), Land and Groove format
• Track pitch: 0.225 μm (micrometers)
• Data bit length: 79.5 nm (nanometers)
• Error correction method: Reed-Solomon code