Optware gains funding for terabyte disk development

TOKYO — Optware Corp. has obtained funds from six companies, including Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and Fuji Photo Film, to develop next-generation optical disk systems using holographic recording technology to achieve terabyte-level storage capacity.

Other investors were CMC Magnetics Corp., Marubeni Corp., Pulstec Industrial Co. Ltd. and Toagosei Co. Ltd. The six companies invested a total ¥360 million (about $3.3 million).

Optware will use the funds to accelerate development of holographic optical disk systems, and said it intends to work closely with the six companies as business partners.

Optware, Sony's four-year-old spinoff, is pursuing a technology called collinear holography, which features information reference beams needed for holographic recording. The approach differs from conventional holographic systems in which information and reference beams take different optical paths. Collinear holography offers the possibility of configuring a holographic disk system in a way that is similar to current optical disk systems.

The company reported in July that it had succeeded for the first time in writing and reading holographic data in the form of video from a rotating disk in a holographic recording system.