Ioptics Inc, a small company based in Bellevue Washington and started by one of the inventors of CD-ROM, has caught the eye of Microsoft Corp, which has become an investor. Microsoft and venture capital company Polaris Venture Partners were revealed as the key contributors to a $9.5m second-round financing package announced yesterday by the firm. Ioptics was founded in 1991 by its chief technology officer, James T Russell, the man widely regarded as the inventor of digital optical data recording, which led to the development of CD-ROM. It’s first round of funding secured $5.2m. Now Russell has come up with a new optical storage method called OROM, for optical read only memory. OROM is described as an extremely small storage technology, and is aimed at usage in portable and embedded computer devices such ashandheld computers and mini notebooks. Microsoft appears to be interested because of its efforts to popularize Windows CE. Its own Auto PC, announced earlier this year (CI No 3,323) would be a candidate for the technology. Java devices are also being targeted, however. Ioptics claims OROM could revolutionize the way software and content are distributed in compact portable computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics devices. The patented technology consists of an electro-optical reader and low cost removable plastic data card with 128Mb storage capacity. The reader is small enough to fit inside a shirt pocket, and the card is smaller than a business card. Unlike CD-ROM and DVD devices, which rely on a moving data sensing head and rotating media to access one bit of data at a time, OROM uses an illumination and data reading system with no moving parts, which can access thousands of bytes of data at once. Data is pre-recorded on the OROM card in a number of two-dimensional images or data patches, up to 5,000 patches on a card, each storing 32 Kb of data. These are aligned over an array of organic light emitting diodes in the reader, each of which is assigned to a data patch. Once illuminated, the light is transmitted through the patch to create an image of the data, projected onto the reader’s image sensor, then converted to digital data. The lack of moving parts makes it shock resistant and economical on power consumption, and the media cost is low compared with CD-ROM. Data access times are said to be ten times faster than CD-ROM, and equivalent to hard drives. Ioptics has taken six patents out on its technology and is applying for more. According to the company, devices using its technology will be much cheaper than those using giant magnetoresistive head technology which IBM has been talking up lately (CI No 3,317). Similarly, semiconductor flash memory costs several dollars per megabyte, and flash cards with a similar storage capacity to OROM can cost up to $1,000. Sony Corp, Iomega Corp and Syquest Inc are also likely to be competitors. The first prototypes are expected in mid-1998, with initial product shipments targeted for mid-1999. The most expensive element will be the reader, likely to cost around $2,000, but cards will cost only $2 to $3 each. Ioptics is looking for OEM customers, and both Packard Bell NEC and LG Electronics, although apparently not actually signed up, were on hand to sing the praises of the technology at the launch.
