Fast Optical Disk Drives †Letting Light Do the Walking

I. (Shelly) Glaser, Ph.D.
Holon Institute of Technology
Dept. Electrical and Electronic EngineeringAbstract:
From the early days of Laser-Discs, there were great hopes for optical disk storage; some claimed it would eventually replace magnetic disk storage. Indeed optical disc storage combines very high capacity with reliable removable media. Nevertheless, with one exception (Steve Jobs' Next computer), all computers still use magnetic hard disk drives. Optical discs are widely used for data and software distribution, data transfer media, and, of course, entertainment, but not as HDD replacement. They are just too slow. Here we shall review two approaches for fast optical disk drives. The first uses parallel access for fast raw data transfer. The other uses optical scanning to obtain very short access times. For the fast access approach we shall discuss design issues and solutions.About the Speaker:
I. (Shelly) Glaser received his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He served as an associate professor at the Faculty of Physics of the Weizmann Institute of Science, and the Faculty of Engineering at Tel Aviv University, and as a visiting faculty member at the USC/SIPI. Later he became the Chief Scientist of Holo-Or Ltd., Israel, a technical/scientific consultant to key high-tech companies in Israel and Europe, and the founder and CTO of a start-up company that developed fast-seek optical disc drive technology. He is now with the Holon Institute of Technology. Shelly Glaser's professional interest includes, besides optical storage, 3-D imaging and display, sensing for machine vision, information optics, holography and diffractive optics, medical imaging and non-conventional optical systems.Hosts: Prof. Alexander Sawchuk and Prof. Keith Jenkins

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Talyia Veal