Hitachi, Mitsubishi and other organizations plan to jointly develop a next-generation optical disc that can store 25 times more data than a Blu-ray Disc, with the aim of putting the technology into practical use in 2012, industry sources said Monday. The next-generation one terabyte (1,000 gigabyte) disc will be designed to complement cloud computing, which allows for the storage of data and information offline on interconnected databases. It also would increase the efficiency of personal computers.

According to the sources, the next-generation disc will employ hologram technology, in which a laser is used to write 3-D images to record and reproduce data. The greatly increased data-storage capacity of the new disc is achieved by storing data not only on its surface but also within the disc.

Tokyo University of Science and some other entities will participate in the joint development of the disc with Hitachi, Mitsubishi Chemical and their group companies.