242w ago - Hitachi has announced anti-counterfeiting functionalities on memory chips without microprocessor such as memory cards, tickets or cartridges.

The Japanese company announced today the development of a mechanism for attesting the authenticity of memory chips using highly secure digital signatures.

Since the mechanism requires neither a CPU nor a computational unit, high security can be attained at a very low cost. As a result, counterfeited or altered memory devices can be recognized as such, with a wide range of applications, including memory cards for digital cameras or handheld video game consoles, cartridges for consumer products, admission tickets or gift coupons.

In order to establish that digital contents are authentic and have not been tampered with, digital signatures usually involve cost-intensive computations and require an important processing power. For instance, in some schemes, large integers with hundreds of digits are multiplied hundreds of times using a powerful CPU.

As a consequence, conventional memory chips without CPU cannot handle digital signatures and are confined to the use of basic identification techniques based for example on serial numbers. Moreover, adding a CPU with sufficient processing power...

292w ago - A single hard drive with four terabytes of storage (4TB) could be a reality by 2011, thanks to a nanotechnology breakthrough by Japanese firm Hitachi.

The company has successfully managed to shrink the read-write head of a hard drive to two thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The smaller head can read greater densities of data stored on the disk.

293w ago - Hitachi has reportedly confirmed that its new 100GB quad layer Blu-ray disc will be compatible with the PS3 and existing Blu-ray players after a firmware update has been installed. This is promising news for all early adopters as they can sleep safe in the knowledge that they won't get left behind. The 100GB disc will also give Sony and its partners huge bragging rights over the HD-DVD camp who have been touting a 51GB capacity disc.

From the article: Hitachi is now working on improving the signal quality of its quad-layer technology so that it will be ready for market. The company also said that it is working on an eight-layer variant of the technology, which would yield a Blu-ray Disc capable of holding 200GB.

Although no new hardware may be required to read the additional layers of Hitachi's Blu-ray Disc, it is still unclear what costs, if any, would be added onto the manufacturing side of the equation. Should expensive equipment be required to manufacture the discs, movie studios may opt to release their titles across two Blu-ray Discs rather than cram Movie and special feature data onto a single disc.

While the Blu-ray camp has its hopes in Hitachi's multi-layer disc technology, the HD DVD group recently approved a triple-layer disc that is capable of holding 51GB. In order to reach...

294w ago - Hitachi has developed a prototype four layer Blu-Ray disc capable of holding 100GB of data.

While companies such as TDK and Panasonic have previously mooted 100GB discs, they have always needed a specially developed optical head in the player to read the disc.

Hitachi, however, claims to have used a standard Blu-Ray drive optical head that's only slightly modified to allow it to read and write data across the four 25GB layers. It's believed this will only require a firmware update to make existing drives compatible.

The company is apparently working now to stabilise signal quality before considering a commercial roll-out.

The hardware manufacturer is also researching an eight layer disc that can hold 200GB of data but has encountered problems with reflections decreasing signal strength across the eight layers, which it is working to rectify.

At the time of going to press there is no word on when the disc will be ready for commercial release.