Sony Corporation (“Sony”) and Panasonic  Corporation (“Panasonic”) today announced that they have formulated “Archival  Disc”, a new standard for professional-use, next-generation optical discs, with  the objective of expanding the market for long-term digital data storage*.
Optical discs  have excellent properties to protect themselves against the environment, such  as dust-resistance and water-resistance, and can also withstand changes in  temperature and humidity when stored. They also allow inter-generational  compatibility between different formats, ensuring that data can continue to be  read even as formats evolve. This makes them robust media for long-term storage  of content. Recognising that optical discs will need to accommodate much larger  volumes of storage going forward, particularly given the anticipated future  growth in the archive market, Sony and Panasonic have been engaged in the joint  development of a standard for professional-use next-generation optical discs.
These efforts  resulted in the formulation of “Archival Disc”, a new professional-use  next-generation optical disc standard, for which the technology roadmap, logo,  and specifications are outlined below.
*Basic  agreement to jointly develop a standard for professional-use next generation optical  discs originally announced on July 29, 2013 .
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201307/13-0729E/index.html

Roadmap

Both Sony and  Panasonic aim to launch systems with a recording capacity of 300 GB per disc  from summer 2015 onwards. In addition, both companies plan to leverage their  respective technologies to further expand the recording capacity per disc to  500 GB and 1 TB.
Logo
The following  logo has been designed to represent the “Archival Disc” professional-use next-generation  optical disc standard.
In recent  times, demand for archival capabilities has increased significantly in the film  industry, as well as in cloud data centres that handle big data, where advances  in network services have caused data volumes to soar.
Both Sony and Panasonic have successful experience working on the development of Blu-ray Disc™ technology. The two companies plan to actively promote this next-generation high-capacity optical disc standard in the professional field in order to offer an effective solution for protecting valuable data into the future.

Key Archival  Disc specifications                                               

Disc size (type)	300 GB (write-once)
Optical parameter	Wavelength λ=405 nm (nanometers), Numerical Aperture NA=0.85
Disc structure	Double-sided Disc (3 layers/side), Land and Groove Format
Track pitch	0.225μm (micrometers)
Data bit length	79.5nm (nanometers)
Error correction method	Reed-Solomon Code

       

Crosstalk cancellation technology*1 and high-order Partial  Response Maximum Likelihood (PRML) signal processing technology*2  have been employed to achieve both larger capacity and higher playback signal  quality.
*1 This technology  electrically removes crosstalk from the adjacent tracks that increase as the  track pitch becomes narrower, to achieve high-quality playback performance.
*2 PRML is a signal processing  technology that improves reproduction performance by allowing inter-symbol  interference.

*Company names and/or product names mentioned in this document are  trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective corporations.