IGN has the details on a brand new technology being developed that will likely one day replace the Blu-ray discs that are currently in the process of trying to make DVDs extinct.

It was announced that Sony has teamed up with Tohoku University to develop a new blue-violet ultrafast laser technology, and that initial testing has shown significant promise for the future of storage capacities. According to the reports, this new technology could hold around 1 terabytes of space — 20 times the space available today. Blu-ray discs hold around 50GBs of space at the moment, and movies and games don’t easily reach that maximum capacity.

If and when this technology is perfected — which could still be a while — the options will become seemingly limitless. Imagine being able to buy a disc with FIFTY HD quality movies on it. Entire TV seasons or maybe even series all on one little plastic circle. Multiple video game titles or brand new games with graphics and open-world map sizes that will make gamers weep with joy. These things look to be on the horizon.

Here’s a much more technical description straight from Tohoku University:

Professor Hiroyuki Yokoyama of the New Industry Creation Hatchery Center (NICHe), Tohoku University (hereafter, ‘Tohoku University’), and Advanced Materials Laboratories, Sony Corporation (hereafter, ‘Sony’), have succeeded in jointly developing a blue-violet ultrafast pulsed semiconductor laser※２ with dramatically improved peak laser beam output levels that are 100 times that of the world’s current highest levels.

This latest successful development is an all-semiconductor laser picosecond pulse source with a laser wavelength of 405 nanometers (1 nm = one-billionth of a meter) in the blue-violet region. It is capable of generating optical pulses in the ultrafast duration of 3 picoseconds (1 picosecond = one-trillionth of a second), with ultrahigh output peak power of 100 watts and repetition frequency of 1 gigahertz. Advanced control of the newly-developed and proprietarily-constructed GaN-based mode-locked semiconductor laser and semiconductor optical amplifier※4 have enabled peak output power in excess of 100 watts to be achieved, which is more than a hundred times the world’s highest output value for conventional blue-violet pulse semiconductor lasers.

Now, I still haven’t warmed up to replacing my entire DVD collection, so I’m in no rush for this to come around. I love Blu-rays but we movie fanatics are very proud of our collections, and it’s never easy to accept the fact that they may become endangered. Nevertheless, the potential of this new technology is really very exciting and I’m so very curious as to what we’ll see come of it, especially with video games! You never think something can get bigger or better than it already is, and then you read about something like this and realize there’s still so much more potential out there we’re not aware of.

[Source: The Examiner]