Alcatel Thomson Gigadisc

Francois Le Carvennec

Daniel Lecomte

Rene Romeas

Dominique Leterme

The present invention relates to optical memories for storing data on the surface of an information-supporting medium including pre-formatted patterns. Such a memory may constitute a random access mass memory, and it may be read/write memory or it may be a write-once memory. The operations of writing to the memory and reading from the memory are based on the optical interaction which occurs at the point of impact of an incident optical beam which causes local changes in optical characteristics which are representative of the data when data is being written, and which produce optical modulation detectable by photoelectric means during data reading. The invention provides an optical memory in which the illumination mode common to reading data and to detecting pre-formatting patterns is modified in order to allow for operation in a standby mode or in order to delete areas reserved for storing data, for example.

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Cernay La Ville, France

Francois Le Carvennec