This chips will be able to manage all type of burning process for CD and DVD media, as well as Bl-Ray 4x (equivalent to DVD 5.7x or 19MB/s, it would take 9 minutes to burn a 25GB media).
The maximal theoretical burning speed of Blu-Ray media will be 12x, equivalent to DVD 17x. This limit is given by the current physical resistance of media when submitted to a angular speed around 11,000rpm. If you go beyond this speed, the media could simply be destroyed due to extreme centrifuge forces. To achieve higher burning speed one will need to change media composition, but it could also cost much more to produce while the real gain would be minimal.
Panasonic should start producing this chips in December for sampling, when mass production planned in January 2006.
