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One Terabyte On a 12-inch^H^H^H^Hcm Disk

News for nerds writes: "At InterOpto'02 - international optoelectronics exhibition hold in Chiba, Japan - OPTWARE Co.Ltd. made up of ex-Sony engineers, demoed(in Japanese) 1-terabyte super-high speed optical disk system "T-VRD." It uses hologram and stores 1 terabyte data in a 12-cm-CD-size disc, with 100Mbps - 1Gbps transfer rate. Available in 2003 as 19-inch rackmount, 2005 for PC." Update: 07/16 18:33 GMT by T : Sorry, that's centimeters, not inches, which is of course even better ;)

20 of 462 comments (clear)

  1. Holographic storage? by Bonker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Babelfish's rather loose translation:

    From the past it is researched, applying the " hologram system ", the system which was developed. With hologram system of conventional type there was a problem in compatibility and the like of the existing media such as miniaturization and cost and DVD. With the technology which this time is announced, you say these weak points were overcome by using the same company individual " polarized light Cori near hologram technology " and so on.

    Hologram technology until recently, using two object glasses, had the necessity to irradiate separate " reference beam " and " signal light ". You say with polarized light Cori near hologram technology these from one object glass the economical space, cost decrease is actualized by the fact that it makes lighting possible. In addition, we have assumed it can maintain also the compatibility of the DVD and the CD media.


    I'm not sure if the translation is making it accurate or not, but it looks like this is indeed using holographic storage and not just holographic printing.

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  2. Re:point? by SirSlud · · Score: 5, Funny

    > Computer technology has pretty much advanced about as far as is necessary.

    Its almost grammarically incorrect to say something like that without punctuating it by sticking your foot in your mouth in 3 years.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  3. cm to in. by bravehamster · · Score: 5, Funny
    NASA Scientist: 12 cm, 12 inches, whats the difference?

    (cut to shot of rocket blasting off, lifting 5 feet off the ground, then falling back to earth in a huge fireball)

    NASA Scientist: Oops.

    --
    ---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
    1. Re:cm to in. by the+way,+what're+you · · Score: 5, Funny

      NASA Scientist: 12 cm, 12 inches, whats the difference?

      NASA Scientist's Wife: Ahem.

      --
      example.org - powered by Linux!
  4. Re:point? by jcr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No one needs a terabyte disk. No one needs a 50" monitor. No one needs 10GB RAM. No one needs a 10GHz CPU.

    Can I put that in my quotes file, right next to "640K should be enough for anybody"?

    If you have a terabyte of storage, you can keep EVERYTHING you ever look at, plus about 3x the space for various indices in case you want to find it again.

    Now, if they were talking about a petabyte, you might have a point.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  5. back to caddies? by lingqi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    i wonder how scratch-resistant this is;

    i mean -- one little scratch will now render hundreds of megabytes unreadable...

    makes no difference to me if in the end half the storage space is dedicated to data-redundancy.

    i want those little data-cubes you keep seeing in Sci-Fi movies. those are neater than the disk format.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

  6. Re:point? by crow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When technology exceeds what is needed for current tasks, new tasks will arise. We can't necessarily say what those tasks will be (if we could, we would start up companies to develop those products), but we can see some recent examples. When hard drive capacities shot up in the past few years, first MP3 collections took off, then TiVo and ReplayTV arose.

    (I guess I've been trolled. Oh well.)

  7. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by breon.halling · · Score: 4, Funny

    Please don't tell my girlfriend!

    --
    "Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
  8. In related news. by aengblom · · Score: 5, Funny

    In related news. Sony announces it will immediatley begin selling these disks to consumers.

    Optware Spokesman:
    "We were thinking it would take 10 years the technology to be needed, but bad jokes about our hardware's "12 inch vs. 12 cm" capabilities, beowulf of them, and how much prOn one could store on it completly overwhelmed previous storage technologies" ;-)

    --


    So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
  9. 120 mm ! : go see the optware site guys... by pruneau · · Score: 5, Informative
    HERE they will explain you what their technology is. Go to the technology section, all you will need is a flash plugin ;-)

    And of course, it's 120 mm = 12cm != 12 inches ~= 36 cm...

    Because CD-media size is a must !

    Basically, they:

    • "split" the beam of light in differents rays, each carrying data, as opposed to CD/DVD where the beam carries one bit at a time.
    • They work into the "bulk" of the recording media, instead in a 2-D way for CD/DVD
    --
    [Pruneau /\o^O/\ warranty void if this .sig is removed]
  10. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by hagbard5235 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Let's do you video calculation again. If memory serves compressed HDTV is about 19MB/second. Let's call it 20MB/second to make the calculations easier. So 1 terabyte gives us about 50,000 seconds. This is about 13-14 hours. So we are looking at about 13 hours of HDTV.

  11. Re:point? by Jorrit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A terabyte is really not THAT much in some applications. For example at my work they have very large medical images (electronic X-ray images and so on). These have to be very detailed so they are big. Since this is also the biggest hospital of Europe there are lots of images coming in every day (several hundreds a day, I don't have exact figures) so this grows quickly indeed.

    Keep in mind that a terabyte is only 1000 gigabyte. I have a digital video camera which I plan to connect to my future computer to work on video's. If you like to store huge movies on disk then this huge capacitity will get small very quickly indeed.

    Greetings,

    --
    Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
  12. Re:point? by AJWM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No one needs a terabyte disk.

    Talk to the computer vision people. MPEG and JPEG compession work in part by throwing out a lot of information that the human vision system won't miss. Applying current machine vision algorithms to such data doesn't work at all well due to compression artifacts.

    Consider the latest digitally-produced Star Wars episode. If that were stored in uncompressed form, it'd take about three terabytes. (Assuming 2k by 3k frames, 24 fps, and two hour running time.)

    Nice troll, though ;)

    --
    -- Alastair
  13. Rough Translation by kawaichan · · Score: 5, Informative

    The corporation optical wear the 1TB (the tera- byte) announced the optical disk technology " tera- byte optical disk system " whose it is possible to write capacity, to the disk of 12cm CD size in the comprehensive exhibition " InterOpto'02 " of optical industrial technology.

    From the past it is researched, applying the " hologram system ", the system which was developed. With hologram system of conventional type there was a problem in compatibility and the like of the existing media such as miniaturization and cost and DVD. With the technology which this time is announced, you say these weak points were overcome by using the same company individual " polarized light Cori near hologram technology " and so on.

    Hologram technology until recently, using two object glasses, had the necessity to irradiate separate " reference beam " and " signal light ". You say with polarized light Cori near hologram technology these from one object glass the economical space, cost decrease is actualized by the fact that it makes lighting possible. In addition, we have assumed it can maintain also the compatibility of the DVD and the CD media.
    Difference of data record method such as CD drive Device of record to tera- byte disk

    Those where the reflecting horizon where structure of the tera- byte disk media puts the cubic measure hologram record material with the disk baseplate of the glass make, the pre- format is done is pasted in the one side. It is not the glass in the future, you call the schedule where the disk baseplate of the plastic make is used. In addition, at the beginning the media of the is offered, but you say relying tub Lu it will be able to offer also the media in the future.

    At the time of data record, signal light and reference beam are irradiated vis-a-vis this reflecting horizon, reference beam and the information light which are reflected to interfere inside the cubic measure hologram material, the data is recorded to the interference fringes which occur.

    When grasping the device which grasps the hologram which irradiates only reference beam, is recorded to the cubic measure record material.

    With the former DVD and CD drive, using single laser light, it does reading and writing, but with hologram technology, the bundle of the light whose large number is thin is used. In addition, the data was recorded until recently level at the bit unit, but with hologram record, it is possible to record to three-dimensional cubic measure hologram layer as a page data.

    Because of that, with the disk media which uses hologram, it is possible to write the data of 3 ten thousand bit inside hologram of diameter 500 mu m. While the respective hologram to be piled up, because it is existence possible, we have assumed it is suitable for large increasing capacity. In addition, only the 1bit data transfer could do with the pickup of former DVD/CD drive, at one time, but because with hologram system the data of 3 ten thousand bit can be read and written at one time, also data rate improves substantially, you say data transfer with the 100Mbps - the 1gbps becomes possible.

    Appraisal device " T-VRD " of the tera- byte optical disk system was displayed in the InterOpt meeting place, demonstration was done. At the same company, at the beginning we have assumed, introduction in TV station and the Government agency is anticipated, we have assumed on end of 2003 offer of 19 inch rack-mounted type system, furthermore it miniaturizes drive itself in 2005, it develops in for the foam/home server and the PC market as a consumer product.
    The drive part of T-VRD When drive was opened. As for the media being stored by the cartridge, it is The corresponding disk was displayed from each company

    Actually hologram it was recorded the media As for this way unused media. The record aspect has like the mirror high reflectance

    Yoshio Chairman and CEO Aoki Chief Executive Officer

    At the announcement meeting place, Yoshio the Aoki of Chairman and the CEO Chief Executive Officer greets, " presently in communication industry, per second also the 1TB thing data has become transmission possible. This the movie of 2 hours is something which is made transfeable in 0.1 seconds. Is, but when it reaches the point where it can exchange the large capacity data instantaneously, even on the storage side which retains that data large capacity and high speed the media which had transfer speed becomes necessary ", necessity of the tera- byte optical disk system was expressed.

    " With the former CD and DVD drive, NA value of the object glass was increased, precision of recording density was increased by the fact that wave length of the laser is reduced. Is, but with this method already the limit has been visible ", also you talked, the disk system which uses hologram emphasized that it is the system which system differs until recently completely.

    Home page of optical wear
    (As of July 16th, the information regarding this product is not published)
    Http: //www.optware.co.jp/ja/main.html

    --

    kawai
  14. News blast from the future. by supabeast! · · Score: 5, Funny

    Headlines from 2003/2005

    Software pirates in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia immediately began selling copies of NBC's entire 2006 TV lineup, Warcraft IV-10, Photoshop 2008, and MS Office Xtra-Ultra-Uber-Nextgen on the new disks for a street price of $5, all on one disk.

    RIAA and MPAA lawyers assaulted Sony with lawsuits today, claiming that the disk assited in storage and dissemination of intellectual property and violating copyright control schemes.

    Immediately after, Canadian and European lawyers under the control of movie and recording lobbyists added a hefty tax to the sale of each disk, with collected fees sent to movie and music companies.

    Australians quickly installed $1 per/disc copy machines in Lucky Dragon stores across the continents.

    Citizens of the USA tried to read reports about the new discs, but because a Microsoft lead consortium refused to provide digital certificates to news releases, Americans cannot view the files on their computers.

  15. Re:point? by cosmosis · · Score: 5, Interesting
    You're right about a Terabyte being just in time to hold ALL of our music, videos, and digital photo's, as well as everything else.

    Here is what I can see for future increases in storage:

    Petabyte: Store your entire DVD collection, CD collection, MP3 collection, all of your digital photo's from a lifetime, books, documents, etc.

    Exabyte (1 million Terabytes): This amount of storage will be useful if you want to record in hig-quality digital video all of yor life from your wearable computer that you take everywhere. You will be abel to access every moment of your life, every conversation and play it back at anytime. The type of memory would also come in handy for storing large, highly detailed Virtual Worlds of your own creation. This is exactly where I see 100GHz machines coming in handy - the ability to render realistic virtual worlds on the fly.

  16. You are oh so mistaken by FreeUser · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Eh, what's the point of having that much storage space? Computer technology has pretty much advanced about as far as is necessary.

    Nice to see you joining us on slashdot, Bill.

    I still remember when you told us all we'd never need more than 640k of RAM. Still trying to live that one down, aren't you? :-)

    On a more serious note, until I can render my entire featurelength movie with full 3d animation effects in realtime I won't be satisfied.

    Indeed, that is only equivelent to a 1x CD-RW or DVD-RW, so even real time won't be acceptable.

    Which means, until I can render my entire featurlength movie in 1 second and ship it out to all my friends and relatives in another second, I won't be satisfied.

    But wait! I want to do that featurelength movie in HDTV 1080p format. Actually, since most of my friends have 1200p capability, I'd like to be able to render in 1920x1200 30 fps, 48bit color in under a second.

    Well, movie making was fun, but now I prefer fully immersive virtual reality, at resolutions sufficient that the human eye can't tell the images aren't real. While realtime was initially fast enough for this rendering (no matter how fast I turn my head!), I find I want to render my worlds much more quickly than that to support multiple presences, so I can meet friends in my virtual world. So, until I can render all 3-d objects down to the molecular level in my entire, vast virtual world, in under a second, I won't be satisfied.

    But wait! I'd like to ...

    1 Terabyte sounds like a lot now, but I suspect we will find it to be very limited a few short years after it comes out. Human creativity is an amazing thing, and tends to push the boundries of whatever technical limits are placed upon it. I see no sign of this changing anytime soon, or of human creativity having come close to reaching some ephemeral "limit."

    We won't be using the same computers in 20 years that we are today. Well, maybe some of the less flexible of us will be, but our children certainly won't be, and those of us more willing to keep up with a changing world likely won't be either.

    Unless, of course, Hollywood is given veto power over all new technologies, in which case our children will be using computers more akin to the old IBM PC/XT my parents used back in the 80's, rather than what we're using today, but that is a tangent for another day.

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  17. Re:ITS CM by PunchMonkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    its says so in the first line of the article, and its not in kanji.

    bla bla bla InterOpto'02 bla bla bla 12cm CDbla bla bla

    RTFA!


    Well, I don't know kanji!!!! For all I know "cm" is the kanji characters for "inches"...

    --
    I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
  18. In the next chicktechno movie by gelfling · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah in the next Angelina Jolie movie some government agency will accidently lose the entire genetic code of every living thing on earth on one of these disks and there will be massive quantities of Chick-Fu to retreive it.

  19. Johnny Mnemonic could only hold 160 GB by John+Jorsett · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was amused by the Johnny Mnemonic movie, in which Keanu Reeve's head would explode if he didn't get the 320GB of data out of it (Johhy's capacity was only 160GB, or 'leakage' would occur). Given how far into the future it was supposed to take place, that amount seemed pretty small. Johnny's 'futuristic' capacity looks ever more ludicrous with each new jump in real-world capacity.