Slashdot Mirror


Movie Playback From 1TB Holographic Disc

qorkfiend writes "Optware Corp. has announced successful playback of digital movies on a new holographic recording disc with a reflective layer. Known as the Collinear Holographic Data Storage System, the disc has a one terabyte storage capacity and one gigabyte transfer speed. The disc size is 12cm, comparable to that of a DVD and a CD."

9 of 623 comments (clear)

  1. Re:One gigabyte? by Laivincolmo · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article states 1GB per second...

  2. More details by Defiler · · Score: 5, Informative

    Optware is using a polymer developed by Aprilis.
    You can find more technical details here: Technical Publications
    The founder of Optware used to work at Sony, and other technical guys working for them were involved with Blu-Ray. I guess they got tired of working by the hour. Heh. Finally, here's an EETime Article that goes into more detail about the Optware product.
    Personally, I just want to know when I can buy a burner.

  3. Go get a CD and a ruler by HarveyBirdman · · Score: 4, Informative
    Since when is 12 cm the size of a DVD or CD?

    I just measured one. 12 cm.

    ObSheesh: Sheesh!

    --
    --- Ban humanity.
  4. what is it? by sometwo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a tutorial on Holographic storage: http://www.inphase-technologies.com/technology/

  5. Re:One gigabyte? by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's pretty safe to assume they mean per second. A CD drive has a baseline speed of 150 kb/s. That means that a 48 speed drive has a transfer rate of 7,200 kb/s. Now if we increase the data density to 1 terrabyte, we find that we are now capable of reading 11 gigabytes at the same RPM. Given the greater complexity of this technology, they've probably reduced the RPMs to something more along the lines of an 8 speed drive. This would reduce the data transfer rate, but impose fewer stresses on the media.

  6. Re:One gigabyte? by canavan · · Score: 4, Informative

    How do you arrive at 11Gb/s? Looks like (7.2Mb/s / 0.64 Gb * 1Tb) - That would be wrong. The areal density increases about 1560-fold (assuming 640Mb/CD), but the linear density increases only by the square root of this. The amount of data that passes by the reading laser along the track would be just 40 times larger for the holographic media compared to a CD at constant RPM, which would result in 'only' 288Mb/s. With 1Gb/s, they'd still be a factor of 4 away, but that's still closer than your estimate.

  7. Re:Never heard of social responsibility, huh? by tolan-b · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually the only responsibility a company has, other than obeying the law, is to generate profit for its shareholders.

    If it does something out of the goodness of its heart that costs its ahreholders money, then its been negligent.

    Now ethical trading can be a way to make money as a unique selling point, but not purely because it's nice.

    I'm not saying this is a *good* thing, but it is, unfortunately, the truth.

  8. Re:One gigabyte? by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative
    48x = 7,200 kb/s
    1 terabyte = 1e9 kb
    1 CD = 6.5e5 kb

    x = 7200 * 1e9 / 6.5e5
    x = 11,076,923 kb/s
    Yes, it's just a simple scaling function. i.e. Back of the envelope calculation. Doesn't mean it's exactly right, but it does give a general idea of how much more data can be read at the same RPM.
  9. 2d vs 3d volumetric by emorphien · · Score: 4, Informative

    Holographic storage is pretty cool, but pretty tricky.

    There's already several technologies close to coming out for 2D storage on to a compact disk sized product. These have a current density of like 1 gb/cm^2 I think and transfer speeds in the hundreds of mb/s to gigabytes. That's what this article is about. A few companies are already looking at it and they're trying to reformulate to support rewritable media better.

    The transfer speed is awesome because unlike a CD where data is read off bit by bit, data is transferred to and read from the holographic disks in 1024x1024 squares (1 megabit). The size of the spatial light modulator is 1024x1024 cells. So one single read action pulls off a megabit of data. That's hot shit IMO.

    The one that gets me really interested is 3d volumetric storage which would be like storing data in a crystal. They talk about densities of a terrabyte per cubic cm, with transfer rates of a terrabyte per second. This I want to see. Unfortunately I forget the material they're using (I did a presentation on it a while ago) but once you "read" from it the light rearranges the structure and data is lost. So right now they're one time write and one time read devices. Not do good for a hard drive.

    --


    Presently here, but not there.