Sharp Aims for High Power Blu-ray Laser Diodes



Sharp Electronics has revealed their roadmap for Blu-ray laser diodes, with a overall goal to make their products more powerful. As announced in February of this year, they will begin mass production of their 250mW blue laser diode next month, which will allow for recording of dual layer Blu-ray media at up to 6x speed.

The current plan is to increase power to 300mW (8x speed) by the beginning of 2009, followed by a 350mW laser diode the second half of 2009 and a 400mW laser diode sometime in 2010. An overall increase in laser power is seen necessary to meet Sharp's goal of providing a laser diode which can write at highspeeds on four layer (100GB) media.

The company currently forecasts that 22M low power (read only) laser diodes will be sold this year globally, along with 2.2M high power (read/write) diodes. By 2010, they expect combined sales of both high power and lower power diodes to represent 100M units.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=1136