Toray unveils multi-gigabyte 3.5-inch phase change optical disk storage solution.

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 28, 1994--Toray Optical Storage Solutions Monday announced the development of the world's highest capacity 3.5-inch rewritable optical media as part of an optical storage system designed to meet the needs of advanced mobile computing and multimedia applications.

Toray's new 1.3 gigabyte Phase Change Rewritable (PCR) optical disk is the latest addition to the company's line of Phasewrite(TM) optical storage products. The new media were developed in conjunction with 3.5-inch PCR drive technology from Toshiba.

"The Toray 1.3 gigabyte media is for high-capacity portable multimedia applications in a 3.5-inch form factor," according to Jim Rowley, manager of Toray Optical Storage Solutions.

"This is the first of a family of Toray next-generation optical products. The technology used in this new media can be enhanced to 5 gigabytes in the 3.5-inch format and 12 gigabytes in 5.25-inch form factor designs over the next several years," Rowley said.

The new Toray 3.5-inch PCR optical storage solution was designed to meet three critical market requirements: small size and light weight for portability, high capacity, and high data rates to handle interactive multimedia applications.

Many of the size and weight issues were resolved by the inherent simplicity of PCR technology compared with existing magneto-optic (MO) technology. PCR drives are not encumbered with complex electronics and mechanics required in MO designs to produce both optical and magnetic recording systems within the drive. Instead, PCR utilizes only laser technology to read and write data at very high densities.

This allows the production of a smaller, lighter, simpler and less expensive mechanism. PCR technology is also inherently faster than MO because of its direct overwrite capability. In magneto-optic drives, erasing a section of a disk that has been previously recorded requires an additional "erase pass" by the recording head, slowing performance considerably.

PCR technology erases old data and records new information in a single pass, cutting recording times in half compared with magneto-optic drives.

Toray has been a pioneer in the development of phase change rewritable optical recording technology. Phase change is a pure optical recording technology allowing Toray to focus on the development of the recording layer, which is inherent with Toray core businesses. In PCR technology, information is written when a short laser burst heats a point on the active layer of the optical disk.

The laser pulse changes the state or the "phase" of the recording surface from crystalline to amorphous. To retrieve information, a low-power laser pulse is directed at the disk and the reflection of the laser pulse is measured. The crystalline and amorphous states have distinct reflective properties, and it is the difference in the way the light is reflected that determines if that point on disk is crystalline or amorphous post and should be read as a zero or a one.

Toray Optical Storage Solutions' ultra-durable media is the critical component in reaching the 1.3 gigabyte capacity target. The new PCR optical disk drive is based on a short wavelength laser diode that allows higher track densities, but which also demands higher quality PCR optical media than typical products.

Toray's 3.5-inch media, like all Toray Phasewrite media products, uses a patented composition based on a proprietary alloy that is magnitudes more durable than competitive products. Toray developed an advanced alloy formulation used in the active media layer to record information, producing PCR optical disks that can support the high densities of the proposed ISO format.

Additionally, Toray Phasewrite media offer better cyclability and are rated for greater than 500,000 read/write cycles.

Rowley said that the compact (1-inch height) drives and (5mm thick) media will make an ideal solution for mobile computing applications, which have never had access to this level of storage capacity. Laptop computer users can record the data equivalent of two CD-ROM disks full of information on a single Toray PCR optical disk the size of a 3.5-inch floppy diskette.

Having this much capacity available in such a compact design will open new applications areas to mobile computing. For example, a complete customer

database or a full-motion multimedia presentation could be contained on a single Toray optical disk.

To achieve the high data rates required by multimedia applications, this technology required the development of an innovative modified constant angular velocity (MCAV) data format on the media. With the MCAV format, each sector on the disk records the same volume of data at the same bit density even though a sector lying toward the outside of the disk is tracked much more quickly than those nearer the disk's center.

The MCAV format adjusts the clock speed to the system, allowing data to be recorded so it can be read back at different transfer rates from 9.8 megabytes per second to 16.4 MBPS, well beyond the 4 MBPS required by MPEG-2, the new de facto standard for multimedia video compression.

A single Toray PCR optical disk can store approximately 40 minutes of digital video using MPEG-2 compression, which is HDTV quality.

Toray Optical Storage Solutions' Phasewrite 1.3-gigabyte 3.5 inch PCR optical media will be generally available when the accompanying optical disk drives are expected to hit the market during the second half of 1995.

Toray Industries is a manufacturing company, which is publicly traded in the Japanese and European stock markets. Established in Japan in 1926, today Toray has annual sales of $9.4 billion and was ranked 233rd in the world by Business Week's 1994 Global 1000 Study of the world's most valuable companies.

Toray Optical Storage Solutions is a division of Toray Marketing & Sales of America (TOMAC). TOMAC has headquarters in New York City, with regional offices in San Mateo, Houston and Seattle.

CONTACT: Toray Optical Storage Solutions, San Mateo

              Jim Rowley, 415/341-7152, ext. 22
               or
              JPR Communications
              Judy Smith, 818/343-9474