NTT Develops Stamp-Size 1GB Hologram Memory

sandalwood writes "NTT has developed a new high-capacity memory storage device based on thin-film holography called Info-MICA. The official site is here but it's only in Japanese for now. According to the article, 'NTT is planning to bring the first commercial Info-MICA products to market in 2005 with a postage stamp-size ROM and a memory capacity of 1GB.' My first thought was that it would be perfect for a future handheld game device!"

Comments

Re:Uncopyable

[Gherald]

This I don't understand. How can it be readable if it is uncopyable?

It's Read-Only.

[drinkypoo]

This is good news for people in the arcade game industry. An array of these will be likely cheaper and more reliable than a hard drive, and will probably be more expensive than but will be dramatically more reliable than a CD or DVD-ROM drive. In fact they mention pachinko, and they also bring up in-car navigation. That is certainly also an excellent opportunity.

Depending on the durability of this stuff under the influence of abrasion and direct impact (they do suggest that it be bound to the outside of packaging) it would make a nice way to store information on ID cards, requiring no electrical contacts.

First uses

[The Only Druid]

See, my first thought is that it'd be perfect for portable music devices, as opposed to gaming. This would better enable innocuous music devices (i.e. that which could be hidden in the lining of a jacket/glove/etc.) whereas gaming devices are going to be held in your hands no matter what (until we shift to full-on wearable computers, i.e. xybernaut).

Future video medium?

[adrianbaugh]

Their proposed uses are all very well, but I think this could be even more significant for video. Even with their current versions you'd need 8 chips to hold the same amount as a DVD: it's likely that the capacity will increase pretty quickly once the technology settles down so there's no reason they shouldn't replace HD-DVDs even before the format gets established. The big advantage is that a video based around these could be built into a cartridge a bit like the old games console cartridges. With no exposed optical surface to get scratched, durability could be a lot better than optical discs. Also the readers would be far simpler electromechanically, leading to cheaper, more durable players.

Of course, whether the content-provision industries consider cheap, durable media and players a good thing is open to question...

Re:ROM only and not copy able

[WormholeFiend]

remember when the first CDs were impossible for the end-user to copy?

yes?

good.

Relative Size?

[gregarican]

I know that SmartMedia cards are now up to 512MB in size (perhaps even larger from the last time I checked). And they are about the size of a postage stamp. Not 1 GB in size, but probably will be there soon, if not already.

Is this a really earth shattering advance? Perhaps the media composition and the fact that's it's transparent adds to the coolness factor.

Agreed. Holographic media has potential

[StewedSquirrel]

Holographic media has great potential in this area because the holographic film can potentially store a large amount of data in a redundant fashion.

In a "typical" holographic image, one tiny cross section of the film stores the entire set of data as visible from that point, which constitutes greater than 50% and potentially up to 100% of the entire image.

I have never been convinced this type of redundancy could move into data storage, but I would be interested to hear.

Stewey