The Future of CDs: 3D Optical Discs with 1.6 Petabytes

Researchers have developed a 3D optical disc with 1.6 petabytes of storage capacity, potentially reviving the future of compact discs.

### The Past, Present, and Future of Optical Discs: From CDs to 1.6 Petabyte Storage
* 📀  The compact disc (CD) was invented in 1980 by Philips and Sony, combining **Philips' laser technology** and **Sony's digital audio circuitry expertise**.
* 📈  CDs saw rapid adoption and success, with global sales peaking at **2.45 billion in 2000** before declining due to **file sharing and digital music players**.
* 📀  Despite the decline of CDs and physical media in general, researchers at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology have developed a **3D optical disc capable of storing a massive 1.6 petabytes of data**.
* 💡  The new disc achieves its high capacity by **stacking 100 layers of data** using **ultra-transparent materials** and **nanoscale data spots**.
* 🔮  The potential applications of these ultra-high-capacity optical discs include **data centers, long-term archival storage, and portable data storage**.
* ❌  However, there are significant challenges to overcome, such as **market adoption beyond niche segments**, **slow writing speeds**, and **high costs**.
* 👩‍🔬  Despite the promising research, it may take many years for the technology to become **commercially viable**.
* 🤔  The future of optical discs remains uncertain, but the research represents an **exciting advancement in data storage technology**.

this video is brought to you by brilliant. Hi, welcome to another episode of Cold Fusion. When was the last time you used a CD or went to a physical music store? Remember flipping through the rows of shiny discs, finding your favorite album, or discovering something new, unwrapping a new CD, popping it into your player, and hearing that crisp, clean sound for the first time was a unique experience. But when you think about it, compact discs were actually pretty cool. A laser scanning a spinning disc to read stored information, delivering perfect quality music or files. For something conceived in the 1970s, compact discs were pretty futuristic. Of course, with flash storage and now streaming and cloud storage, those colorful discs are now the dinosaurs of Technology. But what if I told you that CDs could still be the future? Incredibly, researchers have made a breakthrough. They've developed a 3D optical disc with a staggering 1.6 pits of storage capacity. That's over 200,000 DVDs on a single disc. So today, we'll explore this incredible research and the unlikely return of the compact.

disc how does it work will this ever see the light of day it is exciting but towards the end of the episode. I'll get to the drawbacks as always but before all of that we'll take a fun trip down memory lane and delve briefly into the history of CDs. It's quite an interesting story so let's jump into [Music]. You are watching C Fusion TV [Music]. The CD's Journey began in the late 1970s when Phillips was working on video disc technology. This was inspired by the emerging technology of lasers that could read data without contact. Research on video discs started all the way back in 1957 but it wasn't until the late '70s where Laser Technology became practical. Although it was ahead of its time, the video disc project failed as the public ultimately weren't that interested. I've done a full episode on laser discs if you're interested in that story but it wasn't the end. Phillips saw an opportunity for using laser reading technology in the audio Market final.

records and tapes dominated at the time, but they both had their limitations. Vinyl required delicate turntables, prone to skipping, while cassettes, though portable and re-recordable, lacked the character of vinyl audio and tended to degrade with repeated use. Phillips aimed to create a smaller, more portable disc that could hold at least an hour of music. After years of research, they developed Audio Long Play, or ALP, an audio disc system. Interestingly, they initially considered quadrophonic sound, an early form of surround sound, but abandoned it due to size limitations. The name Compact Disc was chosen to evoke the success of the compact cassette. In March 1979, Phillips showcased the CD's audio quality; however, they lacked expertise in digital audio recording, a crucial missing piece. Engineers at Phillips didn't know how to convert heard analog sound into digital. They had to turn to Japan to solve that problem. In Japan, Sony was a master of digital audio circuitry, with over a decade of experience refining the encoding of sound waves into digital signals; however, they lacked the

expertise to create a physical compact disc. This is where Phillips and Sony converged. The result was genius. Philips Engineers figured out how the laser could zoom past time-etched pits etched into the disc surface and turned that into ones and zeros, while Sony Specialists focused on the analog to digital circuitry, also creating an error-correcting code to maintain that pristine audio. I remember reading about this in an encyclopedia when I was about 12, and I was amazed at how it worked. Anyway, in 1980, Phillips and Sony produced The Red Book, establishing all the standards for compact discs. From then on, they worked separately on their own C equipment but agreed to share components in the early stages. In April of 1982, Phillips introduced the first-ever production CD player. The initial CDs were made in a plant in Hanover, Germany. Debut titles included Abba's album The Visitors and a recording of Herbert von Karajan conducting Richard Strauss's the Alpine Symphony. In October of 1982, Sony CDP 101.

made its debut in Japan Jaan, alongside the first run of CD albums led by Billy Joel's 52nd Street. Sony's device was pricey, around $2,300 in today's currency. Initially, US record labels were skeptical about CDs, but one year later, 1,000 different titles were available. In time, the audio quality began to speak for itself. In 1985, Dire Straits' album Brothers in Arms became the first CD to sell over a million copies, and it remains the world's most successful CD album. By 1988, 400 million CDs were produced by 50 pressing plants worldwide. In the year 2000, global CD sales peaked at 2.45 billion. Between 2000 and 2007, CD sales nearly halved to 1.75 billion, and this was mainly due to file sharing and MP3 players. And we all know the story from here. Ultimately, the rise of streaming services and changing consumer preferences led to the decline of CDs. By 2021, CD sales had dropped by 95% since.

their Peak currently at their lowest levels since 1986. Major artists like Adele, Taylor Swift, and BTS caused a brief Resurgence of CD sales in 2021, but the overall trend remains very downward, and the fall of music CDs took CD-ROMs and other forms of optical media with it, so it's pretty much done. That's it. It's certain. CDs once dominated, but now they just occupy a nostalgic corner. Or do they? Well, as mentioned at the top of this episode, the life of the CD may not be over. So I was thrilled to see this recent paper in Nature about a new optical storage method that could bring this memory into the petabyte range. Petabytes. That's 1,000 terabytes. Imagine having to store around 6 billion web pages. So if you store this massive amount of data on a 1-terabyte hard drive, the device will cover the area about the size of an average playground. But with this new technology, the same amount of data can be stored in the device the size of a desktop computer. Researchers

at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology have developed a 3D optical disc with an astonishing capacity. It can store up to 1.6 petabytes of data. They published their study in Nature, and it's understandably caused a bit of a buzz. So, 1.6 petabytes, what is that? That amount of data on a single optical disc is amazing, but without context, it's just a number. So, let's break it down. Let's compare it to the current champion of storage, the ExaDrive EED CT100. It is currently the largest solid-state drive available. It offers a staggering 100 TB of storage capacity, but the price, well, it's jaw-dropping: $40,000 or $400 per terabyte. And you thought Apple was bad. But the thing is, to put that into perspective, 100 TB is enough space for approximately 20 million songs, 20,000 HD movies, or 2,000 standard iPhones' worth of data. Well, that is a lot. Well, this disc has even more capacity. 1.6 petabytes is equivalent to 200

terabyte or 200,000 GB. The craziest thing is this new disc is about the same size as a normal DVD but holds 4,000 times as much as a Blu-ray. Okay, so you must be asking how did the researchers do it. Here's a simplified and brief explanation of it. The secret behind this massive storage lies in layers. Traditional Optical discs like CDs or DVDs typically have one or two layers to store data, sometimes they can go up to four, but this new disc is like a skyscraper with 100 Floors, each layer holding precious information. By stacking these layers, the researchers have crammed in more data than ever before. Next, ultra-transparent materials and nanoscale spots. To achieve this feat, they used Advanced Materials that allow light to pass through with minimal scattering. Now, imagine tiny spots, microscopic dots on each layer. These spots are where the magic happens. Researchers created a new material called aggregation-induced emission di-doped photoresist or AIE-DDPR for short. It's a fancy and quite a mouthful.

of a term, but think of these spots as data pixels. The interesting thing here is that they're smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. This was a limitation of traditional optical storage, but now with this method, they can record data in sections as small as 1/10th the wavelength of visible light. This allows for the encoding of data on those 100 layers. It's like writing with a super fine pen on an atomic scale. So how do you write data onto this disc? Well, it's like orchestrating a laser ballet. A green laser triggers spot formation. It's like a conductor raising the baton. Then a red laser steps in and switches off the writing process. By controlling the timing, they made the spots smaller than the waves of light themselves. It's akin to Precision Machining with light on a nanoscale. To read the data, they employed another laser duo. A blue beam makes the spots glow. Then an orange light turns off the glow, and with that, the data is revealed. According to the researchers, their disk

with 100 layers spaced just a micrometer apart, can read and write data very accurately. To give you some imagery of the accuracy, here's a demonstration of some layers being written on. And remember, the scale is 5 micrometers. But the journey to get here has been long and arduous. Professor Mingu, who led the research, explains how challenging it was over the last 10 years to find the perfect materials that could both handle reading and writing data in such a small space. The plus side is manufacturing a disc is also easy. It takes about 6 minutes per disc and it uses a similar method for those used in DVDs. These new ultra high-capacity discs are well suited for data centers. These discs could enable data centers to store exabytes of data in a much smaller physical space than current technologies. Think a billion gigabits of storage in a room instead of a stadium. Also, optical discs are known for their longevity and durability, so this makes them ideal for long-term archival storage. They're

portable and also robust against electromagnetic interference. So this makes it suitable for safeguarding critical data. But of course, now the moment you've all been waiting for, the downsides and limitations. While the new Optical discs hold a lot of promise, there are some severe limitations and challenges to consider. So obviously there's market adoption. Apart from niche market segments like data storage and archival storage, using physical media will be a tough sell. Everyone's already used to cloud storage and streaming services. They're not going to want to give up their convenience. Physical media is just an extra step and added friction. And next we come to one of the biggest issues. Current prototypes have major limitations in terms of writing speed and efficiency. The estimated energy consumption would be in the kilowatt range per terabyte of writing, and the write speed is only megabytes per second. Researchers are working on improving these aspects, but who knows how long that's going to take. And next, next we have the cost. A fosc laser, similar to one of the ones used in the setup, costs

almost $50,000 and needs fans from an AC outlet. Now that is a showstopper if I've ever seen one. Lasers etching data on a nano scale really is amazing, isn't it? Science as a whole is amazing, but it can be overwhelming to understand. Well, fortunately, there's a fun and easy way to learn about it with brilliant.org. Brilliant is where you can learn by doing with thousands of interactive lessons in maths, science, data analytics, programming, and AI. Their course on scientific thinking is a great place to start. Each lesson on Brilliant allows you to play with Concepts, a method proven to be six times more effective than watching lecture videos. Plus, all content on Brilliant is crafted by teachers, researchers, and professionals from MIT, Caltech, Duke, Microsoft, Google, and more. Learn at your own pace to brush up on a project for work or just for your own self-development. You can try everything that Brilliant has to offer for free for a full 30 days. Visit brilliant.org/coldfusion or click on the link in the description. You'll also get 20% off an

annual premium subscription. Thanks. Now back to the [Music] video. So, in conclusion, it seems like CDs wouldn't be making a comeback for the average consumer anytime soon. But with such large amounts of storage in such a small medium, there could be new uses for this technology, perhaps data sensors of the future will be using pet CDs. But ultimately, realistically, in the grand scheme of things, research is research. And for those of us interested in the cutting edge, it's very cool to geek over such solutions. But the reality is this will take many years to become a product, if ever. But I could be wrong, and maybe the researchers will continue to refine the technology until it becomes commercially viable and the market responds positively. But anyway, what are your thoughts on this? Would you like to use such a behemoth of an optical disc format? Let me know in the comment section below. So, that is the story of the compact disc and its surprising possible future. Okay, so my name is toogo, and you've been watching cold fusion.

I'll catch you again soon for the next episode. If you did like this video, feel free to subscribe to Cold Fusion. All right, cheers guys, have a good one. [Music] [Music] Cold Fusion. It's new thinking.

Why This New CD Could Change Storage

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ColdFusion

Compact discs, once considered outdated, are now making a potential comeback with a new 3D optical disc capable of storing a massive amount of data.

The journey of CDs began in the late 1970s when Phillips transitioned from failed video disc technology to the development of the Audio Long Play (ALP) system.

Phillips showcased the CD's audio quality in 1979 but lacked the expertise in digital audio recording, leading them to collaborate with Sony, who was a master of digital audio circuitry.

The Evolution of the Compact Disc: From Invention to Obsolescence

Phillips and Sony collaborated to create the first compact disc, establishing standards and introducing the first CD player.

The CD rapidly gained popularity, with millions of copies sold and a peak in global sales in 2000, but sales declined sharply due to the rise of MP3 players and streaming services.

A new optical storage method offers the potential for a CD resurgence, with the capacity to store massive amounts of data.

Researchers at the University of Shanghai have developed a 3D optical disc with a staggering 1.

6 petabytes of data storage, equivalent to 200,000 GB.

The disc, the size of a normal DVD, uses 100 layers and ultra-transparent materials to achieve this massive capacity.

The data is written and read using a precision laser process on a nanoscale, allowing for the encoding of data in sections 1/10th the wavelength of visible light.

The Revolutionary Ultra High-Capacity Optical Discs

A new optical disc technology with 100 layers, capable of storing exabytes of data, has been developed for data centers.

However, the technology faces challenges in market adoption, writing speed, and cost, limiting its potential for widespread use.

The use of fosc laser for writing data at a nanoscale brings amazing accuracy but is hindered by high costs.

CDs are unlikely to make a comeback for the average consumer, but they may have potential for new uses such as data storage for the future.

However, the research is still in the early stages, and it may take many years for the technology to become a viable product.

The commercial viability of CDs will depend on the researchers' ability to refine the technology and the market's response.