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How Holographic Storage Works
The Chef writes: "Tweak3D.net has yet another excellent article for nerds -- err, I mean, guys looking to fill their brain with technical know-how. This time it's on holographic storage for PCs. Yeah, that's right -- storing files using holography! Go here for the story." This is something that gets mentioned in passing frequently but it's nice to have the technology explained nicely. Thanks for the overview!
haven't we been talking about stuff like this for years?
Wake me up when you have a product please. I'm sure all of this would be interesting if I was a computer engineering researcher of physics, or if I wasn't expecting exponential improvement for the foreseeable future anyway. But nether I'm not.
Btw, weren't' we supposed to have florescent CDs by now? Anyone have an ETA on those?
The majority of those who oppose the death penalty have never been a victim of violent crime -- CNN
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
If they achieve the 10 Gb/cm capacity like they are forecasting, then finally I will be able to have the a (insert favourite MP3 player) that can hold a decent amount of MP3s
Even with a 140G CD you're still bounce by DMA data transfer rates. I read about this company years ago but am not much impressed by their public information. Their CFM disk looks alot like a glass master disk. Holographic storage has taken many forms in the past ten years, mostly due to the fact that many of the crystals originally used would only work at sub-zero temperatures (thats Celcius boys and girls) and would degrade very quickly. Your CFMD for the most part looks like a bunch of bunk. Even if it proves feasible which I highly doubt, the cost of a single drive would be extraordinary, just look at what happened with DVD-RAM when it first came out. So 600$ for a new drive and however many dollars for a disk which would be lucky to have the write speed of a CD-R or I can go with a couple 75GB hard drives that have a much higher data transfer rate.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Access times all depend on the sort of retrieval you're going to use. One system proposes using sound waves to cause different oscilations in the crystal letting to hit it at different angles with a reference beam. Instead of holographic storage replacing RAM I think we'll see it start replacing magnetic storage. Once refined the components to read and write a holographic cube would cost about as much as a good CD-ROM drive with the cubes not costing too much because they can be easily mass produced. With 10GB per cubic centimeter it isn't hard to imagine larger crystals holding 100GB or more.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
" I first heard about holographic storage research ten or twelve years ago"
:)
I think the first mention of holographic storage was 1968. The Hal 9000 computer in 2001 used it.
If Mr. Mr. A.C. Clark's vision is correct (and he has had some good visions) holographic storage will come of age this year
AdFuel
The external hologram surface may indeed be sensitive to damage. This is why Harddrives come packaged inside of metal cases. Sunlight would be blocked out as well. Additionally, magnetism, which damages non-optical drives, would not harm this drive. Generally speaking, optical storage devices have always been more reliable then magnetic media. You didn't learn much about holograms when you made one in 1977, because much of what you said here is wrong. As an explorer, you probably made a reflecting-light hologram, similar to what is on a VISA card. These are inaccurate as the picture changes depending upon the angle and colors of light reflecting upon the foil. Using a transmission-light hologram is much more accurate. When a monochromatic light source (expanded laser) shines upon the film, the original image is created in 3 dimensions. The image is very insensitive to precise alignment of the lasers. The laser can be angled within a range of more then 10 degrees. The film can hold more information then one 3-D image. This is what IBM is refering to. Additional monochromatic light sources can store multiple images in the film, each constructing a 3D image when transmitted through the film. After too many images are added to the film, it can't reconstruct images as well. Think of this as overexposing regular film, it's almost similar to this. The solution to this is not to have many images. One true 3D image (which holograms construct - not false ones like 3D glasses construct) already holds much more information then it's 2D counterpart. I'm a little unsure about the practicality of a holographic drive in the near future, but IBM is known for applying it's research to products. The copper technology and advanced layering of ceramic insulaters/semiconductors are examples of this. Holography has already met and surpassed traditional optical methods when it comes to nondestructive testing.
I recommend Optical Methods of Engineering Analysis by Gary Cloud for more reading in the area of holograms and how/why they work. This book is very applied and mentions many practical examples of holograms in industry.
Finally, my grammar nazi side is pointing out that you misspelled manufacturing. It's late and I probably misspelled more then just that, so I forgive you.
Keeping
How about "people looking to fill their brain with technical know-how"? I am female and I very much enjoyed this article.
I doubt that this thing will be anywhere near a serious contender for replacing my hard drive for a few years, simply due to the fact that holograms require a nearly perfectly stable plane, but I find that this thing looks ipressive for use as a backup medium. You can store an incredible amout of information on a relatively nonvolitile small item, and retrieval times are very fast. Apply some massive redundancy in the encoding process so that you don't waste too many blanks, and you have the perfect medium for doing those daily backups. Plus, a cube a few CM in dimensions looks so much more Sci-Fiish than a spinning disk for storing information
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Granted, many posters here and the article itself have pointed out many legitimate reasons.
Seriously though I see to recall an article back in the old, dead tree edition. Er, just a sec
...Man, I wish all the magazines had archives as complete as the old Byte ones. Anyhoo, they have a couple links about holographic storage there too:
1996 and 1998
Not bad, but essentially saying the same thing as the tweak3d article. Some of the other, non-holographic versions of storage sund like they may actually see the light of day first.
--sugarman--
No more disk/RAM
Let's face it: we have RAM to execute programs and disks to store data and programs permanently. When you have something as potentially fast as holographic memory (assuming it boils down to no moving parts), you have the speed of RAM combined with the capacity and persistence of disks.
What this means is the whole paradigm of modern operating systems shifts. Your programs will maintian state between power cycles, files won't have to be read into memory (they can be used in-place), etc. The whole thing takes over "virtual memory". (This is sort of how the PalmOS works with programs maintaining state)
This is not unlike the paradigm 64-bit memory addressing boasts (where you could map the entire drive into a memory address range and make dealing with disks a whole lot simpler).
Probably this doesn't deserve much of a response, but... let's see. Currently at home I'm working on a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) project which relies upon large aerial photographs that averge 250MB each. It doesn't take long to fill 10GB at that rate. My girlfriend is an artist and she regularly generates intermediate Photoshop files in the 20MB range. In the office, I regularly deal with databases which require several GB of storage space.
So, for what it's worth (which is probably not much), there you have it: real-world evidence that people really can take advantage of large drives.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
So if you had a CD-diameter disc, 1cm thick, with say a dozen lasers constantly illuminating a fixed area on any given cylinder therein... You could have full-motion real-time immersive 4-d senso-vid!
:-P
Or like 27432 x 10 ^ 32 full-length MP3's
IBM is known for applying it's research to products.
:-)
As a grammar nazi, you ought to know that this is supposed to be "its", not "it's".
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
no, you've got it backwards. A geek is someone who is awkward or weird. Such as those interesting people in circus sideshows (like the human pincushion and whatnot), they were sometimes called geeks. I'm not sure exactly what a nerd is, but I think its what you described to be a geek.
The trick will be to find a way to use many lasers at various points to illuminate the storage medium at near simultaneous speeds. It's essentially parallel retrieval, but it will speed things up.
JHK
CASCAP, Inc.
One possible answer is because of the sensitivity of holographic equipment to vibrations. A hologram encodes phase differences between laser beams. Errors in the phase encoding mean errors in the data retrieval - you get a blurry or disjoint hologram, or you lose your data.
Light is in the hundreds of nanometers range of wavelength. This means a vibration in the equipment (a movement of one part relative to another) of only a tenth of a micron can completely throw the phase encoding out of alignment. Imagine a tape deck whose heads needed positioning to submicron precision.
Making holographic images is therefore rather difficult if, say, a large lorry rolls past your window. A hard-drive with the same problem would be absolutely useless.
So until a suitably hard substrate can be found on which to engineer this equipment, it's only a pipedream. Maybe nanotechnology will create such a material ... I doubt it'll happen before then.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
The trick will be to find a way to use many lasers at various points to illuminate the storage medium at near simultaneous speeds. It's essentially parallel retrieval, but it will speed things up.
Tupac
Knock the monkey flat on his ass next time. Junkbusters.
No, I don't work for them, yes I use it, and yes, it kicks major ass. I haven't seen an ad in months.
--
-jacob
-jacob
Wonderful article. I'm so glad /. still posts stuff like this occasionally.
The author mentions, enticingly, that the potential of the technology is to store 10 gigs or more in an area roughly the size of a "single gambling die". This, clearly, is a fantastic dream.
Regrettably, the real problem that the article doesn't really touch is the space and more importantly, the precision and energy, required by the laser that is needed to read and write to the medium. Just glancing at the interior of my relatively rudimentary CD-ROM drive, I can see that its mechanism consumes considerably more area than a die. And it doesn't even rely upon the sophisticated network of lenses described in the PRISM research project.
You all know how inconvenient it was/is to transport a CD player through rough terrain and expect it to work continuously. Imagine trying to get any kind of ruggedness out of this badass!
However, 10 gigs smaller than the last joint in my thumb.... yum.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Unfortunately, my girlfriend dropped my holocube into a cup of tea, thinking it was a sugarcube, and I lost the lot.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Finally a really good article about holograms in general and holographic storage specifically. Most people are not really aware how close many companies are to production of holographic storage. While magnetic hard drives are getting really dense they are still overly mechanical which adds greatly to their price. A holographic drive that would fit into a 3.5" internal bay could hold easily more than 100GB of data and have few or no moving parts. This means a greater mean time between failure and much less power consumed by the system (so we can power our GeForce 7s and Voodoo 9s). Besides desktop and server storage you could have a shitload of information encoded into a small plastic chip on a driver's license or credit card. The next generation of smart cards could carry user preferences for various computers, personal files, and cryptographic signatures. On top of that you can stick holographic drives in TiVo like toys or portable MP3 players. A single memory card the size of a sony memory stick (which is some of the best looking portable media ever) could hold a week's worth of music or an entire HDTV quality movie. How about a Palm XV with a gig of storage, that would be something to show off at an office party. Wow, I seem to have wet myself.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I think its time the penguins said-So long and thanks for all the fish-
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
holography
Pronunciation: hO-'lä-gr&-fE
Function: noun
the art or process of making or using a hologram
And because I know that you're gonna ask:
hologram
Pronunciation: 'hO-l&-"gram, 'hä-
Function: noun
a three-dimensional image reproduced from a pattern of interference produced by a split coherent beam of radiation (as a laser); also : the pattern of interference itself
All definitions are taken from Merriam-Webster's Website. It's ironic that I steal MP3s but I still try to reference information that I use. Can anyone explain those morals?
Keeping
I rest my case.
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Holographic storage will be/is damn close to instantenous... you'll still need ram though.
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
And they were suggesting that within 5 years, we'd all have gigs of this stuff on our desktops. I guess that's what happens when you let managers decide on project release dates instead of the engineers who are actually doing the work!
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Polls showed that the common public was not interested in video phones at all so only one company in Germany dared to try and make them. Apparently it did not go that well for them.
.sig
Ok, so who is the supplier for Blue-Green SolidState Lasers under 50$ ?
I'd imagine no one right now, but there isn't that much demand either. And you're missing the point with your DVD comparison: holographic storage is (or at least has the potential to be) *really* fast, with (most importantly) no moving parts.
And yes, costs will eventually come down. Remember, cds weren't cheap in 1985 either.
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
I mean cd media and hardware. Drives cost in the tens of thousands and pressing cds was incredibly expensive when cds first came out. Now you can buy a 30x cdrom for $20, and companies press cds by the thousands for 10 cents a piece.
But geez, 18 pounds? That's almost $30! Is that for a music cd? And I thought they were outrageous here!
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
i dont need more storage right now. what i need is fast storage. instantenous accesss to lets say 100 GB. yeah, that be sweet. no need for RAM -- super fast storage.
but a breakthrough nonetheless. 48 MB/cm^2.. but 10 GB/cm^2 possible. Desktop units by 2003.
Looks like IBM is breaking down the doors of high storage yet again. Their 45-75 GB drives are impressive, but this? Wow.
Access rates look pretty nice long-term too.. "a gigabit-per-second data rate appears reasonable for holographic storage".
"You can represent this entire problem as a 3x2 matrix"
Ok, so who is the supplier for Blue-Green SolidState Lasers under 50$ ?
Not to sound like a nay'say'er but this is an expensive and complex solution. Take an Epoxy Cube of Layered Alumn'/Seaweed (ala DVD) and What is your Total MB^3cm? Is it cheaper?
I'm terrible when it comes to physics with light, and I was even able to understand that. Really read the article.
You know, I'd love to see this as much as the next guy, but isn't this a tad like every other story we've seen that promisses us a technological marvel "just around the corner" so to speak that never arives? It's interesting, but I wonder if we'll ever actually SEE one? I've been hearing about this kind of optical storage for at least 5 years now, and have never seen a single bit of technology make it into production. Has anyone else?
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
So my question is, WHAT'S TAKING SO DAMN LONG?! Can someone just PLEASE come out with a holographic storage drive already? Fer chrissake.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Wouldn't this have more to do with the way the information is layed down (metaphorically speaking) rather than the actual physical material used?
Perhaps in the next five years we will see the advent of the non-spinning drive, and portable disk space approaching the petabyte. Enough storage to keep most of what we now consider to be human knowledge.
Maybe it's enough to keep most of human knowledge on it, but I bet M$ can still come up with an OS that will fill most of that storage capacity.
Of course this has been predicted for a while. OD course they kept saying we'll have it soon and then not coming through. Same with a lot of stuff. Still, the engineers usually get it right in the end. But it's always later than they said it would be. 2003 seems a little optimistic t'me.
"If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated"
The slashgods repeatedly rejected a submission about a scientific american article that talk about upper limits on magnetic storage and puts forth a marvelous discussion of holography (http://www.sciam.com/2000/0500iss ue/0500toig.html). My question is, why this article and not the other? I personally preferred the Scientific American article.
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-E. W. Dijkstra
You can already fit every piece of music ever written into a few gigs
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Main problem I see is that for now it would be read-only, like CD's... and we already have DVD storage. Still though, these would be great for movie storage. You could store the entire star wars trilogy in 3 different languages, THX and the original analog audio, all on one cube.
witty sig goes here
Holographic storage, it's a science fiction, as of now, What more can I say.
I worked on it in Grad. School 8 years ago. It seems 8 years passed by without significant progress in this field.
One major limitation is that data per page is limited to the resolution of the LCD display. The most economical supply was those computer projectors. We took it apart, tore off its polarizing plastics, and all we could get is 640x480 (maybe they make higher resolution now). You can spend BIG money and get a special designed LCD SLM, it has higher density, but they can't make it bigger. There are limitation of numbers of angles (or wavelengths) you can use to store different pages (in reality, maybe around 20, best under 100), so data size per page is really important.
Another problem is the recording material. The commercial read-out device has to be small diode laser (like CD-ROM, laser printer), so the data has to be recorded in the same frequency - RED - means low energy (like, black-and-white dark room can be illuminated with dim red light?). I never heard of anyone produced a material that could record under red, or anyone made a blue diode laser.
On the side line, if they could make R/G/B diode lasers, then we can make super-sharp projectors. TV or monitor... now that's something I want.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
I do not in any way mean to detract from the accomplishments presented here (though, of course, it's been presented in varying shades of "Any time now" for decades. I made my first hologram as a Explorer scout in 1977 or so, and at that time it was already a staple of such classics as "The Adolescence of PI")
However, the storage capacity cited is 10GB/cm^3 cubic centimeter) not cm^2 (square centimeter) as you stated. By comparison, given how thin the magnetic films are, I doubt the 75GB HDD even has 1 cc of active storage volume so holograms do not approach the volumetric density of magnetic media.
The key of course is that holograms offer the promise of true volumetric storage, where magnetic media is limited to the thin film [though who can forget the hedelberg group who used a thin film -- namely a roll of commercial adhesive tape to as an optical medium for up to 10GB a few minths ago?)
So, since it comes down to form factor, I'm not excited. The problem with the HDD is the overall associated mechanism, and with 1 GB matchbook 10G-resistant HDDs out there *today*, I'm not sure when I'll ever be excited. There is no reason to expect we'll be carrying 'naked' (or packaged) holographic media, any more than we carry naked (or packaged) *high density* platters today -- and holographic drives may well be larger, more expensive, more fragile, etc. than HDDs in 2003, as well. In 2003, you won't be able to *buy* a new HDD as puny as 10GB, if indeed they are still maanufacturing that size, today.
The external hologram surface may turn out to be sensitive to damage (though I can hope for the use of confocal optics, etc. to image the volume despite surface imperfections or contamination) and the volume may be vulnerable to sunlight.
The hologram technology used here showed promise because it can be multiplexed with different laser colors and at different angles, but the 'clarity' of the signal goes down with the square of the number of channels, until it is unintelligible. This does not bode well for rapid breakthroughs (though if we could predict them, they wouldn't be breakthroughs). Precise alignment is necessary to assure high density, reliable readings. it seems likely that the 2003 holographic drive will be larger, more expensive, and offer no appreciable advantage (aside from ?magnetic insensitivity?, if that counts)
Aside from the probability of actually seeing a production drive someday, I think that several other holographic technologies are more promising. and none of the holographic technologies show signs of exceeding the practical capacities of straight optical media in the predictable future -- i.e. the next three years. Standards, not technical capabilities, block DVD-R from coming out *this year*
Hey, I want my petabyte encrypted keychain as much as the next guy... but, you know, 'fire' still has many unparalleled uses, in the nuclear age. And I'd rather grill than irradiate my dead cow this weekend anyway
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
What you read probably is from Scientist's report to Pentagon so they can get more money to fund their graduate student and publish papers, which enhance their fame and status.
And they knew it's a unworkable technology.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
strangely enough,
I figure there are plenty of side show freaks with GREAT people skills.
I still think a nerd is personality inept.
The modern definition of geek, to me at least, implies interest in cerebral, scientific stuff.
A nerd wears tape in the middle of his glasses and takes his sister to the prom.
Dude, there's a difference between NERD and GEEK.
I don't mind being called a geek... it just means my interests are eccentric compared to the mind-numbed hoards.
But a nerd implies that I don't have any people skills.
Anyone else know the difference?
The word is "geek" you politically correct bastard.
You can't be using MP3's then... all my music use up 5-6GB. Granted, when I encoded it, I didn't use 128kbit... but still, getting ALL the music ever written onto a few gigs would be quite a feat (unless you discount 90% of the music out there as nothing but a clone, which with today's pop music wouldn't be too far off :)
Voting Moo Anyway!
Maybe so, maybe so. Can we get some articles about SERIOUSLY cool stuff that will occur in this decade?
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Don't forget the requisite comments about more MP3 and p0rn storage...
is that you have to outfit your computer with special paper 3d glasses. one side red, one side blue!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Take a look at the mechanism in a laptop drive, or a walkman, or a minidisk player.
Desktop drives only come in two sizes: big, and bigger. Since CDs are rather wide, CD-ROMs fall into the "bigger" category. It's cheaper and easier to make the electronics big, so they use the available space.
If your drive had a smaller (and more expensive) laser thingy, you'd be complaining at the wasted space.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
I give you proof: Comments #12, #2, #11, #15, #17, #16, #13, etc.
The only comments so far that did not fit into these categories are ones that say "Even I understand it!" And this while a bunch of trolls are still at 0 or 1 (although they will probably be at -1 by the time you read this). Please, moderators, spend your time shoving down the trolls before wasting points on borderline stuff that you may not like but someone else might.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
The, um, backup crystal is almost full...
inspired by this paragraph.
However, as you keep recording more data pages slightly away from previous pages, the holograms will begin to appear dimmer and fogged up because their patterns must share the material's finite dynamic range and the data page is physically etched into the crystal. Eventually you will run out of space to store because the crystal has depleted all of its physical storage capacity, sort of like write once, read many media such as CD-R.
This is how they get so much data, you can shift the angle ever so slightly and have a new canvas. Mix this with a billion nano-bots with flashlights and miniature crystal-zamboni's and you've got some serious disk space.
--
+&x
I see a lot of info about information density and price points, but what about access times? How long can we expect data requests to take? I understand that this is all still in its infancy, but I'm just interested in orders of magnitude. I would assume that it's faster than magnetic media requiring moving parts, but how does it compare to RAM and other silicon storage?
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
I was making holograms in my undergraduate physics /. and /.er haven't heard much
courses. And there are explanations of them in
even basic optics books. But since this is
you don't need to take even basic physics to be
a coder I guess most
about them. BTW they knew about holograms before the laser was invented. Altough noone could make it work until the laser did come along.
Anyway, I am surprised they didn't mention the coolest
thing about holograms. You can physically break a hologram
in two and you will have two copies of the same
hologram (although there will be a lose in quality.)
Photographs store information about the image --
holograms store information (phase and intensity)
about the light that bounces off the image. Cool
huh? even if they aren't useful everyone must agree
that they are seriously cool!
Install this on the spaceshuttle Discovery and program it to do missions.Can we spell H.A.L.9000? (Good Morning Dave)
Geek Hillbilly
The main problem with holographic storage is creating a usable and stable reader/writer. People have managed to create holographic storage devices from such fanciful things as spinning glass rods and tanks of supercooled gel
By the way
There have been some recent advances in fixed holographic storage, which would allow a 1-6 terabyte hard disk to be made, with no moving parts. However, the cost/gigabyte is still well over that achievable by magnetic media (but under that of copper memory).
Perhaps in the next five years we will see the advent of the non-spinning drive, and portable disk space approaching the petabyte. Enough storage to keep most of what we now consider to be human knowledge.
Reach out, extend to, and embrace the universe.
-Einstien
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Embrace, extend, and engulf the universe.
Reach out, extend to, and embrace the universe.
-Einstien
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Embrace, extend, and engulf the universe
Given enough density of storage... and cheapness
.Net?? Screw that... I'm much
of availablility.....
I wouldn't mind designing machines with a 'Brain'
So to speak....
Think of a computer that's just cpu, ram(??) and
your basic graphics and I/O devices...
Drop in your personalized "brain" cube and you have
your complete home away from home system (that
you burned to cube for just this purpose) at any
convenient 'puter Kiosk...
If you figure they can pack 140G's into a 2 inch cube... (though wonder if that might be too thick?) that would allow you to customize
your linux (or other os if they figure it out)
setup to probe the type of machine and boot up accordingly...
It would also leave room for more storage...
Wouldn't even have to be read/write.. *shrug*
At least not for daily stuff....
All this hype about
more inclined to carry all the
info/applications/etc.etc. I need WITH ME...
Not leave it sitting on _your_ server.. *shrug*
Some Troll seems to have temporarily "borrowed" my account to post some rather OT messages (trolls), I've changed the password so hopefully that's the last we'll see of them...
Sorry about that guys.
--
Jon.
http://www.jonmasters.org/