While 100GB and 128GB Blu-ray BDXL discs are finally a reality, this hasn't stopped TDK from pushing the technology to new limits. According to the Japanese website, Tech-On!, TDK has now developed a 1TB (yes, terabyte) optical disc. This disc contains 16 layers, with each layer capable of storing 33GB on each side.
The company realized the large capacity by forming 16 recording layers, each of which has a capacity of 32 Gbytes on each side of the disc. The number of layers of an existing Blu-ray disc is four at most.
TDK succeeded in forming 16 layers by developing a disc material with a high light transmittance. Specifically, the light transmittance of one layer is 95.1%, and that of 16 layers is 72.6%.
Despite the number of layers, TDK claims that the time it takes to read one layer is the same as a standard Blu-ray Disc and the error rate is low enough for commercialization. The only problem they still have is the thickness of the recording layer (260μm), which needs to be 100μm or less to conform to the Blu-ray Disc specification.
