I'm confused. Doesn't a writable DVD work on the same principle of using a laser to heat small portions of a spinning disc? Why should this methods be so many orders of magnitude faster than writing to a DVD?
First, keep in mind that this is a modification to hard drives and not DVD-like equipment. The heat pulses in the case of the article are still modifying the magnetic bits on a spinning metal disk.
Second, it seems that it's faster to generate these heat pulses than it is to switch the magnetic orientation of the write head. I haven't looked into the physics, but this is the only plausible explanation my limited imagination can fathom.
