"multi-level" burners. What is this guy talking about?

[Stanley_Kubrick]

Hey people!
So if I said this dude was in here asking me about "multi-level" cd burners, would you know what he meant? I asked him to define this concept, but what he was describing sounded more like RAW mode capability. He said something like multiple lasers, blah blah blah--anyway what it meant to him was flawless bit at a time copies.
Does this exist? Have you seen it?
I was not scoring with google...

[MacGyver]

I used the search terms "multilevel cd burn" on Google and found this: <a href="http://www.alamopc.org/burn/cd1001.html" target="_blank">http://www.alamopc.org/burn/cd1001.html</a>

Here is an excerpt:

[quote]
Plextor has announced it will release it’s PX-ML3630 Multilevel CD-ReWriter in early 2002. It’s a regular 12x CD-Rewriter, and using new multilevel (ML) CD media, can write to three levels in the MLCD resulting in a 36x writing speed and 2 GB of total free space. Can you believe 36x speed on a 2 GB CD and a Plextor? Better start saving those coins. Calimetrics, the inventor of ML technology is proposing a DVD+RW ML drive next year that will store 25 GB per ML DVD+RW disc, and a 250 GB ML drive by 2006.

From vaporware central, The Optical Institute of the Technical University in Berlin has introduced the microholographic disc with a storage capacity of over 150 gigabytes. It uses a microscopic reflective matrix to store data on both surfaces and within the disc using laser beams of varying wavelength and spatially overlapping layers of micro-grids rendering the disc in 3D. Can you believe 230 (650 MB) CDs on one disc? I don’t think this one is headed for the home market.
<hr></blockquote>

Basically what it boils down to is storing data in a three-dimensional solid instead of a two-dimensional surface. Yes it is possible however only now the technology has developed towards actual usefulness.

[Hippie_Tech]

I had read something about this in an article on the windrivers daily computer news section. The article was talking about the current DVD burning standards. It mentioned something about multi-layer burning coming out soon. I didn't know they meant for CDRW's as well. As far as I know, there aren't any drives out yet that can do it, nor is there any media out for the drives. I won't even guess at the price of such a drive.

[Stanley_Kubrick]

ahhh
so it seems, from that excerept in MacGyver's post, that this is like what is going on in some dual-layered movie DVDs. there are two layers of data at different depths.
what threw me off was the way this guy was convinced that all his buddies had them and he wanted one too. Now it makes sense.
I remember an old MaximumPC with a picture of one of the media for this technology; basically looked like a clear disc.

[ilovetheusers]

Heard of this a while ago, very nice technology.

The only problem is - how long will it take to move 100 or more GB to or from one of these things? There has to be a theoretical read limitation speed of a CD/DVD. Takes long enough to move 100MB off of the 52x drives today.