Sanyo Electric’s New Faster and Higher Capacity Laser Technology

It’s like the sports car and the saloon competing in terms of engine power. But this is about nanotechnology, not cars. Sanyo Electric has beaten Sony and other rivals to develop an improved blue laser diode for faster and more efficient Blu-ray systems. The technology by Sanyo has produced a laser which can emit a 450-miliwatt strong beam, twice the capacity of existing laser systems. This diode is a giant in laser technology with capability to write and read data of up to four layers at a speed of 12x, as compared to existing leading laser discs’ burning of two layers of data at a rate of 8x.

Each recording layer on a Blu-ray Disc can store 25G bytes of data, or a total of 100GB of data, using the technology developed by Sanyo. In other words, the burning of an eight–hour high-definition video would only take 10 minutes with this breakthrough development. While the laser technology is ready, it will be some time before products which can support the higher speeds emerge in the market. Returning to the metaphor o cars, the engine is ready although the automobile that can support such sheer speed is not yet manufactured. The laser technology by Sanyo inevitably promises many exciting and fascinating developments in related industries.