A company called C3D, with offices and labs in New York, California, Israel, Russia, and the Ukraine, is demonstrating CD-ROM discs that can hold 140GB of data, over 200 times the capacity of current CD-ROMs and almost 30 times that of a current DVDs. They're also showing off a credit-card sized storage device that can hold upwards to 10GB of data.

So, how does the technology work? Apparently, Fluorescent Multi-layer Disk and Card [FMD/C) technology works much the same way current CD-ROM technology does - by pointing a laser beam at the storage media and then interpreting the way the different pitr + regions respond to light. But instead of just reading the surface, C3D's drives will use a laser to activate fluorescent material embedded in the disc or card and then interpret the light produced from that material. The high capacities are then attainable through the usage of multiple layers of this material (upwards from 10 to 20 layers in the initial products with perhaps as many as 100 in later versions).

Here's a breakdown of the initial product offerings: FMD ROM (Read Only Memory) Disk: Based on the CD/DVD-ROM concept, the initial FMD ROM will be 120mm 10-layer disc with the 140GB capacity. This means that up to 20 hours of compressed HDTV film could be stored on a single disc! Drives will be fully backward compatible with existing CD and DVD media.

FMD Microm WORM (Write Once Read Many) Disk: The initial write version of the FMD drive will initially enable up to 4GB of data to be written to a 30mm 10-layer disc. It's much smaller (1/4th the size) of current CD/DVD media and will be usable in notebooks, digitial cameras and video recorders and players.

FMD ClearCard ROM (Read Only Memory) Card: The initial model will be a clear, credit card-sized media using up to 20 layers (400MB/cm2 data density) for a total capacity of 10GB. Data access will exceed 1GB per second. The cards themselves will be inexpensive and disposable.

FMD ClearCard WORM (Write Once Read Many) Card: Using a powerful semiconductor pulse laser, the planned initial production model of the credit card-sized ClearCard-WORM will utilize up to 10 layers and will have a capacity up to 1GB. We can already imagine MP3 players using this technology...

Products using Fluorescent Multi-layer Disk and Card [FMD/C) technology are said to be ready for production by the end of next year. And since the company has been founded by industry veterans with specialties in the field of optical storage, industry analysts and forecasters are taking this news far more seriously than most. As for cost, C3D has stated that discs won't cost any more to produce than current CD-ROM media and that manufacturing plants will only require "minimal retooling" to make their equipment compatible. In fact, FMD storage media manufacturing processes can be even more simplified as there will no longer been any need to deposit the unneeded reflective materials (FMD/C media is transparent).

As for pricing on the overall technology, the company's general products manager, Ingolf Sander, a former Kodak and Verbatim executive states, "The most important technical spec is a thing called price". We hope to hear more about this soon. For the full skinny, check out C3D's website .

So what does this mean to you? It means that you would have to buy into the technology to reap the rewards. FMD drives will read existing CD and DVD media although existing CD and DVD drives won't be able to read FMD media. So the install base will have to be grown, which means they'll have to win some serious OEM deals with the likes of Compaq, Micron and Dell to have a chance at a new standard. Also, to replace DVD, FMD discs would have to be compatible with consumer DVD players or they'll end up as a niche product much like DVD-RAM technology. The FMD card technology certainly has potential though