News Letter No.16

as of Mar 20,2002 No.16

Optical Data Recording in 2030s (1)

The Sub-Terabyte Optical Memory Committee of OITDA organized a workshop for discussing the future of data recording and the expected developments by 2030s, as a part of the Sub-Terabyte Optical Memory Symposium held in November last year. The purpose ofthe workshop was to consider and make projections on the memory market and technologies that will be available in 2030s; in other words, the market and the technologies that are a generation ahead of what is considered by the Sub-Terabyte Optical Memory Project currently undertaken by the committee. Since no projections on the development of either the industry or the technology had been previously carried out in earnest with regard to optical memory in 2030s, the discussions at the workshop were promoted by inviting expertsin the field of memory as lecturers and encouraging the presenters to present bold and original predictions.

Contained in this issue is the presentation given by one of the lecturers, Mr. Ryoichi Imanaka of Matsushita Electronics, who is asked to summarize his presentation while also giving due consideration to the discussions that followed his presentation.

The IT Society and Optical Memory in 2030s

By Ryoichi Imanaka

1. Introduction

The IT Infrastructure Sophistication Program was set forth as of fiscal 2002, as a comprehensive national R & D project that is considered indispensable for overcoming Japan' s delay in IT-related developments compared to the West and realizing a society which enables anyone to access the network anytime and anywhere.

The Sub-Terabyte Optical Memory Project, which is a project undertaken by the Sub- Terabyte Optical Memory Committee, was incorporated into the above program. It is expected that the incorporation will further enhance the R & D activities of the project, which, in turn, should contribute to the achievements of the program as a whole.

Under such circumstances, the workshop for predicting optical memory in 2030s was held as a starting point for examining future optical memory technologies by making somewhat bold assumptions about the society and the role of memory three decades ahead.

With the research and development project scheduled to end in a little over a year, theworkshop was organized also as an opportunity to discuss the achievements of the project as well as future direction of technological developments related to optical memory.
(Although the previously prepared technology roadmaps of respective fields cover expected developments up to 2015, none of them go as far as 2030s.)

This paper is based on the content of my presentation, "The IT Society and Market Trends in 2030s." A summary of relevant and valuable suggestions given by the experts at the workshop is also included in the discussions to follow.

2. The World in 2030s

2.1 Changes in Social Environment
The most obvious change in the society in 2030s compared to today will be the population. Given the recent lowering of birthrate, it is easy to expect the total population to fall 10 - 15% from the present level by 2030, with those who are 65 years or older accounting for 25 - 30% of the total. See Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 Changes in Population

In 2030s, a larger proportion of the population will be highly educated, while the number of family members per household will continue to decrease. As for everyday life, people will be able to additionally enjoy the sufficiency of clothing, food and housing.
Their central interest will be on their cultural and creative activities. People' s focus in life will shift from clothing, food and housing to creative activities. Consequently, not only receiving but also sending data for cultural and creative purposes will become increasingly widespread, particularly among the elderly.

In order to promote such data transmission activities of the people, new types of IT equipment and networks will become necessary, which is easily predictable as a natural consequence of the expected arrival of IT society in earnest in this century. The national and local governments should work hard, in cooperation particularly with the elderly people, to achieve such a society in which the happiness and meaningfulness of the lives of the citizens will be additionally enhanced by their ease of data transmission capabilities.

2.2 Technological Innovation and Environmental Evolution
Fig. 2 shows the technological innovations projected by the Ministry of Education and Science, illustrating the expected dates on which the respective items will become availablefor practical use. The items selected for presentation in this chart are those that are very closely related to the sub-terabyte optical memory.

Fig. 2 Survey on Future Technological Developments
(by Education and Science Ministry)

Great expectations are placed on the realization, particularly of the items listed after 2010. In the field of optical memory, molecular and atomic level memories will be the ultimate density; and that, in turn, is predicted to give rise to an increasing interest in the development of molecule and electron control technologies.

Although the researches for the practical application of VOD (Video On Demand) had been activated for some time in the past, VOD has not yet been developed into a general
purpose technology. Its further development in the future is much awaited.

3. Projection on Near-Future Network Environment

By 2030s, whether people like it or not, it will become practically impossible to carry on everyday life without being able to access databases from one' s home. On the basis of this assumption, the applications to be executed on home terminals were projected and the roles of the package media, storage equipment and the network storage facilities were considered. In addition, the specifications of the required networks (trunk network and links to houses), servers, and of various types of optical memories for the networks.

3.1 Accessible Services from Home Terminals
Below are conceivable types of services that will be accessible from home terminals.

Electronic government (business processing services for residents, electronic voting)
Home business, telecommuting (electronic library, automatic translation telephone, business transaction, stock exchange, banking, etc.)
Home medical care, home nursing
Personal health and medical data (39GB for image + Several hundred GB for DNA data/ person)
Entertainment
VOD (Video On Demand), D-TV (Digital TV), IP (Internet Protocol) for receiving minor TV broadcasts (e.g.; bullfights, Mongolian Sumo, etc.), private broadcasts (musical and theatrical performances, sports day activities, etc.) anywhere in the world
Virtual family, virtual reality conference
Physical examination using virtual reality

Higher performance terminals and networks will be required for the people to comfortably and fully enjoy these services.

3.2 Higher User-Friendliness of Terminals The user-friendliness of terminals can be enhanced through realization of:

Higher-speed transmission, abundant memory
Crisis and security control
Remote monitoring and sensor control of terminals by ASP (Application Service Provider)
Agent technology, agent robot, interactive large screen
Bio- interface

In addition, the following must be readily available at individual households for managing large capacity data:

Data filter
Data mining
Technology for safely and confidently deleting data

3.3 Network and Storage Media
In 2030s, it will become possible to receive and send several TB of data on individual terminals. Given the amount of data handled by the applications mentioned earlier, it is likely that the data will be downloaded not only from the network, but also from other media,broadcasts, packages, etc. The appropriate medium from which to obtain large capacity data will be selected according to its ease of use (i.e.; cost, speed, etc.).

Of the obtained data, those considered useful will be accumulated to a certain extent for constructing respective databases at individual homes. Since the data on the network are renewed everyday, it will be necessary for one to store data at one' s home according to
private use and purposes. While low cost is a prerequisite for the storage media to be usedfor data accumulation at home, either rewritable optical disks or write-once media with a minimum of 1TB/disk will be required for adequately performing the predicted tasks.

The optical disks for personal data management and the optical disks capable of archiving the data while constantly accessing the network storage will be necessary for the storage ofmedical and other personal data. Presently, the network storage is mostly performed on tape media. In the future, it is expected that the present tape media will be replaced by optical disks with a capacity of 100 GB or more per disk.

3.4 Network Transmission Speed
By 2030, the transmission speed will be several hundred times faster than in 2015.
Some claim that it will become possible to transmit data at 1 TB/s even to and from private homes. Others say, however, the diffusion rate of 1 Gb/s network will only be 70% by 2030. In either case, it is natural to expect that the transmission speed will be faster for the powerusers and home business users (i.e., those who work at home and constantly access the network). The time required for downloading is the key factor for evaluating the trans mission speed.

The transmission speed of home terminals was accelerated first by the introduction of ISDN, followed by ADSL and cable modems. The speed at present is up to 8 Mbps. It is expected that FTTH (Fiber To The Home) will become widely diffused in the next several years. Given the potential capacity of optical fibers, it is believed that the transmission speed can be increased without changing the infrastructure.

Fig. 3 Network Transmission Speed

3.5 Storage Capacity
Storage devices will be incorporated into the network nodes (or into the gateways at home or the relays along the trunk lines) for higher-efficiency network use. The following projections are based on the required specifications of the storage at respective nodes presented in the "Survey on the Near-field Application Technologies" published in March 2001:

Mobile equipment: 100 GB
Home server: 1 TB to 100 TB 100 TB or more of data to be stored at home
Local cache server: 1 PB to 100 PB 1 TB or more/disk for optical memory for archiving Fig. 4 is the assumed network model on which the survey was conducted.

The regional server is linked to the backbone network, which, in turn, is linked to the global network.

Fig. 4 Network Model

4. Conclusion

Fig. 5 is the memory technology roadmap representing the above projections. In 2030,an optical memory system with 10 to 100 PB capacity and compatible with 1 Tb/s trans mission speed will be required for the network storage.

Furthermore, a memory capacity of 1 TB to 100 TB will be required for the home servers to be used at individual households. The stored data will be archived by transmis sion to a removable disk or stored by removing the original disk as required.

Once the highest density by blue laser is achieved, the pursuit for additionally higher densi ties will center on the development of volume recording (i.e. multi-layered recording films,

Fig. 5 Memory Technology Roadmap

multi-valued and multi-layered data) and near-field recording methods. Finally, the memory that is suitable for data structures that take data processing such as data mining into consideration in advance was also discussed at the workshop.

Announcement on FST 2002

The Ninth International Workshop on Femtosecond Technology (FST 2002) is scheduled to be held at AIST Tsukuba Center, Tsukuba, Japan, on June 27 and 28, 2002.
FST 2002 is an international workshop sponsored by the Femtosecond Technology Research Association(FESTA), New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization(NEDO) and National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology(AIST). OITDA is one of the cooperative organizations.

The FST2002 technical program will consist of parallel sessions for oral presentations of invited papers and contributed papers, and a presentation of the contributed papers.

Scope:

Ultrafast Electronics, Optoelectronics and System Applications
Nano and Photonic Structures for Femtosecond Devices
Ultrafast Phenomena and Material Science
Femtosecond Pulse Generation, Measurement and THz Radiation

FST2002 Secretariat:

The 17th Kenjiro Sakurai Memorial Prize
to Taiyo Yuden and Furukawa Electric Groups

The 17th Kenjiro Sakurai Memorial prize was awarded to 2 groups, consisting of a totalof 5 persons, to Ms. Emiko Hamada and Mr. Takashi Ishiguro of Taiyo Yuden Co., Ltd. and Mr. Akihiko Kasukawa, Mr.
Tetsuro Ichiji and Mr. Kaichi Ikegami of The Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd.

The prize was established to promote the optoelectronic industry and technology and as a memorial to the former director of OITDA, Kenjiro Sakurai. To date, this award has been presented to fifteen individuals and fifteen groups, comprising a total of 61 awardees.

The awardees of the 17th Kenjiro Sakurai Memorial Prize were selected after careful screening of a total of 11 applicants, who have played leading roles in the fields of the optoelectronic industry and technology since 1996.

Ms. Hamada and Mr. Ishiguro of Taiyo Yuden received an award for having "developedthe Rewritable CD (CD-R) using an organic pigment that is fully compatible with CD, on thebasis of their epochal idea of forming an interference structure on the recording layer by using a pigment with a high refraction index and a low absorption coefficient, and realized ahighly economical large-capacity medium, which, in turn, not only resulted in the high diffusion of CD-R as a global standard technology in the field, but also contributed to the expansion of the optoelectronic industry market."

Mr. Kasukawa, Mr. Ichiji and Mr. Ikegami of Furukawa Electric were awarded for having "greatly contributed to the development and diffusion of the large-capacity optical fiber communication system using the WDM (wavelength division multiplexing technology), by introducing their original strain compensation type quantum well active layer for the pumping laser (1480 nm and 980 nm wavelengths) of the optical fiber amplifier, establishinga highly productive and low-defect crystal formation method, and realizing the world' s highest output operation and mass-production."

Dr. Shoji Tanaka, Chairman of Kenjiro Sakurai Memorial Prize Committee, Director General, Superconductivity Research Laboratory, reported on the selection process and handed the certificates, the medals, and the prize money to the five awardees. The award ceremony was held on December 5, 2001, at the 21st Optoelectronic Industry and Technology Symposium.

This work was subsidized by
the Japan Keirin Association
through its Promotion funds
from KEIRIN RACE.

takano@oitda.or.jp

OITDA