Optiarc is a brand of

optical disc drive In computing, an optical disc drive (ODD) is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can on ...

s and

solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuits to store data persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-state device, or solid-state disk. SSDs rely on non- ...

s. It is owned by a US-based Vinpower Digital, Inc. Initially Optiarc was established on April 3, 2006 as a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

between

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

(55% shares) and

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered at the NEC Supertower in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It provides IT and network solutions, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), Inte ...

(45% shares). The company, named Sony NEC Optiarc, focused on manufacturing optical disk drives primarily for the OEM desktop and notebook PC markets. On September 11, 2008, it was announced that Sony would take over NEC's 45% share, making Optiarc a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony, to be called Sony Optiarc. This took effect on December 5, 2008 In March 2013, Sony closed its Optiarc optical disc drive division, laying off about 400 employees globally. In 2017, an American company, Vinpower Digital, whose main business is manufacturing optical disc and other media duplicators for the commercial market, acquired the rights to the Optiarc brand and product line. The brand PioData is also owned by Vinpower Digital.

Products

Products were both DVD+/-R(W) and

BD-ROM Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-definition ...

drives. Among other things, Sony Optiarc supplied the Blu-ray drives for the

Sony PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...

. The naming scheme for the drives is as follows: DDU stands for DVD-ROM, AD stands for DVD-RW, BR for BD-ROM and BC for BD Combo. A combo drive is a drive that only supports the newer format in reading and the predecessor in writing. The three digits that follow indicate the generation, the design (5.25" or slimline) and the speed class. The digit after that the equipment variant and the appended letter the interface. An AD-7243S is a 5.25" DVD-RW Drive with 24x speed when writing to DVD-R and DVD+R blanks. It also supports Labelflash. For Lightscribe, a "1" would be in the fourth position. The "S" indicates SATA. An “A” stands for PATA. However, the last Optiarc drives were no longer available with this legacy interface.

References

External links

* Electronics companies established in 2006 Computer storage companies Electronics companies of Japan Former NEC subsidiaries Former joint ventures Optical computer storage Former Sony subsidiaries Electronics companies disestablished in 2013 Japanese companies disestablished in 2013 Japanese companies established in 2006 2017 mergers and acquisitions {{Brand stub

Products

See also

Similar joint ventures

References

External links