Calimetrics was founded in 1994 by Terrence Wong, Michael O'Neill, and Thomas Burke. Based on Dr. Wong and Dr. O'Neill's UC Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 research, the company received startup funding of $1.8M from an Advanced Technology Program

Advanced Technology Program

The NIST Advanced Technology Program is a United States Government program designed to simulate early stage advanced technology development that would otherwise not be fundable.ATP unique in that it is designed for early stage research in industry, not academia, though it...

 (ATP) grant to conduct research and development on pit depth modulated optical data storage systems. Over the years, Calimetrics raised approximately $50M from government, venture, angel

Angel investor

An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...

, and corporate sources. Calimetrics was acquired in 2003 by LSI Logic and ceased operations in 2004.

Technology

Pit depth modulation, which the company later branded MultiLevel Recording

MultiLevel Recording

MultiLevel Recording was a technology originally developed by Optex Corporation and promoted by Calimetrics to increase the storage capacity of optical discs. It failed to establish itself on the market...

 (ML), is one of many techniques to increase recording densities on conventional CD-optical media. Calimetrics' implementation of pit depth modulation, using modified CD drive electronics but no changes to the pickup-head, increased the quantity of distinguishable recording-marks from 2-levels (used by EFM

Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation

Eight-to-fourteen modulation is a data encoding technique – formally, a channel code – used by compact discs and pre-Hi-MD MiniDiscs. EFMPlus is a related code, used in DVDs and SACDs. EFM and EFMPlus were both invented by Kees A...

 in CD) to 8 levels. The increase in bit-density had a side benefit of increasing data-transfer rate (at the same rotational-velocity of the disc.) MultiLevel, like most of the other strategies proposed for extending CD capacity, was not backward compatible with CD-ROM

CD-ROM

A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....

 technology: 2GB ML R, RW, and ROM disc playing and recording required ML-capable writers and special ML-CD compatible media. However, the cost to build CD rewriters with both ML and CD support was less than that of DVD-recordable technology.

Calimetrics's commercialization partners included Iomega

Iomega

Iomega is an American producer of consumer external, portable and networking storage hardware. Established in the 1980s, Iomega has sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks. On April 8, 2008, EMC Corporation announced its plans to acquire Iomega for a consideration of US $213M...

, Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...

, TDK

TDK

, formerly , is a Japanese company which manufactures electronic materials, electronic components, and recording and data-storage media, and markets them globally. Their motto is "Contribute to culture and industry through creativity"...

, Mitsubishi Chemical, Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics (Panasonic

Panasonic

Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...

), Sanyo Electric, and Shinano Kenshi (Plextor

Plextor

is a brand best known for its optical disc recorders. The brand name is used for all products manufactured by the Electronic Equipment Division and Printing Equipment Division of Shinano Kenshi. The brand was formerly known as TEXEL by which name it introduced its first CD-ROM optical disk drive in...

).

History

In 2001, Calimetrics demonstrated hardware prototypes for a 2GB ML-CD reader/writer, using blank-media that was very similar to CD. By the time the ML-CD system was ready to enter consumer production (late 2001), CD-R/RW drives had dropped significantly in price due to the entry of Taiwanese producers and industry backing behind the various DVD recordable formats had become significant. In addition, the illfated Sony double-density CD format (DDCD) had already come and gone without any lasting impact on the market. This left ML-CD, another offshoot of the CD, with an uncertain outlook. Suffice it to say, without a launch commitment from drive and blank-media industry, ML-CD drives never reached the consumer-market.

When the company was acquired by LSI Logic in 2003, it had already begun work on ML-DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

. Like ML-CD, ML-DVD required new drive electronics and special ML media, but no change to the optical pickup-head. In terms of capacity, both ML-DVD-R (recordable) and ML-DVD-ROM discs were specified at 16GB for dual-layer, and 8GB for single-layer. Rewritable media (ML-DVD-RW) offered 8GB (single-layer.) Because of the shared physical characteristics with DVD-ROM pickups, the ML controller-chip was anticipated as a drop-in replacement for existing DVD-drives, greatly reducing cost of ML-DVD capable drives.

This time, Calimetrics faced competition from both above and below. From above, there were the two blue-laser formats - the Philips/Sony backed Blu-ray, and the Toshiba/NEC Advanced Optical Disc (AOD.) Both blue-laser formats were more costly, but offered greater storage (and industry backing.) From below, Taiwan's home-grown DVD-spinoff (called FVD: Forward Versatile Disc) offered less capacity than ML-DVD, but enjoyed the backing of Taiwan's governmental research agency as well as Taiwan's semiconductor industry.

The DVD Forum later approved the AOD proposal, which was officially in 2006 as the HD DVD

HD DVD

HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...

 format. The Blu-ray Consortium quickly followed and released their own players and movie titles to compete head-to-head against HD DVD. Meanwhile, China, the consumer market most likely to accept ML-DVD for domestic-use, instead chose Taiwan's FVD. Faced with dwindling opportunities to launch ML-DVD, LSI suspended research and development on MultiLevel Recording.