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Turner Testing Holographic Storage
Izmunuti writes "An article in ComputerWorld describes tests by Turner Entertainment of a holographic storage system from InPhase Technologies as a possible replacement for magnetic tape for storing their movies and other programs for playback and broadcast. The article states that each holographic disk holds 300 GBytes." Even more impressive is the cost per terabyte estimated for just a few years down the road.
Mmmmmm... vapor...
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
That's all I want to know. :-)
I want one. And I want a Cortana floating over it. And I want her defragmenting my data and writing my school reports on the fly.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
Can't find anything about shelf life or connection types. All I could find was that the data was stored in parallel at a million bits at a time.
Also, 27MB/sec, could that be a typo? Seems awfully slow, no?
...until they come out with holographic-RW
Mind you, this is hardly a unique problem, only a large-scale concentration of a wide-spread one.
What do you get when you mix disco with technology? - This. Worst. Presentation. Ever.
The storage solutions are much more lacking in speed/reaction time than in size.
What I would like to see is not a 1TB harddrive, the size I can get today by buying two harddrives, but rather:
Speed: It is a real bottleneck, to wait for disk access. SCSI is expensive for the home user still.
Throughput: What, still under GB/s ?
Reliability: Since a harddrive is capable storing more and more data, it is more and more important to increase reliability, It takes time to fill up a hard drive, it takes a lot of effort if its a lot of data to backup, so more reliable hard drives would eliminate a lot of problems. I don't care about guarantee, that they exchange the disk if it blows up in x years, my data is still lost then. Let's not even talk about what happens if it's over guarantee period. I'd expect a hard drive to work for five years or so flawlessly, more isn't needed since the technology gets obsolete in that timeframe already.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
From the article: "Their production version promises to be much faster than tape, but we've not seen that yet," Tarasoff said.
So we're reading an article about an executive excited about a prototype demo to his bosses involving technology that won't be available for a year or more??? If that's acceptable, then I have a lot of articles to write!
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
R2D2 is suing Turner for infringement, he had this technology a long time ago.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
As will all future similar enterprise storage systems... It's The Quality Control Stupid...
Deleted
I always just put my holograms on my desk. If I get board of them they go near the pencils in the drawe... Oh wait... I should read the article shouldn't I.
but this and this is. Why did the summary only link to the press release and not the info? I had to browse the site a little get some interesting stuff.
And for my fellow PDF viewing overlords, read this this and this.
now I can store all my po rn in a single disk.
How lomg till some corporation vehemently opposes this one?
Manojar - pronounced like Manager
Because the technology is optical, it shouldn't really be thought of as an equivalent of CD or DVD, but more akin to tape technology for long-term backup. In that respect, its current lab throughput of 27MB/sec is comparable to LTO2 tapes, the projected 160MB/sec for the production version is much higher than most backup technologies today.
While there is a market for big and fast storage, there are ultimately trade-offs between the two. 1TB in a 12cm disk is going to have some physical limitations, firstly the maximum speed of rotation before the disk breaks itself apart and secondly the data density which if it's using holographic methods will be using the volume of the medium, not just the surface. taking those limitations into account, it's clear to see that improvements in access times and transfer speeds lie with the accuracy of the seek and read hardware, which will be improved over time based on past optical technologies.
So I'd see this initially as a volume storage backup solution primarily, not a hard drive replacement, or even a home-user class backup system. The industry that I work in would be a prime user of this kind of storage. for instance, we're shooting a 28 part stop-frame animated series in High Definition, current calculated storage requirements for all those frames is 14TB. Online storage for editing is a bank of three Apple Xraids with around 8TB in each one, but how do we archive it? Currently it's dumped onto HD tapes, but eventually we'll need to keep the raw stop-frame footage, and we'll need to find 14TB of space somewhere. In that event, 14 holographic discs totalling $1400 is much more appealing than archiving to 1555 dual layer DVDs or 70 tapes, regardless of the amount of time taken to access it, which will most likely be to restore it to the Xraid for future editing and reference.
Infringe you will not, technolgy we did have. Stopped you must be, on this all depends.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
The promise of Holographic storage is giving me the same feeling that I felt when I found out what the screen resolution of HDTV was going to be. Too little too late. Although, the "promise" of less moving parts would be nice.
1. "Their production version promises to be much faster than tape, but we've not seen that yet," - faster than what tape drive? Sort of like saying "Our production model sports car will be faster than a Pinto!" 2. Is there a formula to calculate how much bloat this will add to the future versions of Microsoft products? And my non-serious (because number 2 was oh-so-serious) question: 3. Is there built-in protection to shut off the projection unit if there's a change in pressure (say from when your wife opens the door to your computer room to see what you're watching)?
Even more impressive is the cost per terabyte estimated for just a few years down the road.
Is it? $100 for 1.6TB works out at around 30 cents for 4.7GB, which is roughly what you pay nowadays for your DVD. So, although it will be nice to have bigger discs, the storage cost of data is still going to stay the same...
Also note:
"prototypes of the holographic disk arrays have a data transfer rate of 27MB/sec"
and
"Even this first version can store 300GB per disk, and it has 160MB/sec. data throughput rates. That's burning."
I don't get it... It's going to burn at 160MB/sec but only read at 27MB/sec?
Seems that this new form of storage is rather nifty. But kinda slow at the same time. For mass storage I can see how this can be used in almost any application unless you want it done instantly.
::stares off into space::
My question is: Where are isolinear optical chips?
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
This article from the company in the link seems to show different numbers:
http://www.inphase-tech.com/news/turneronair.html
Me thinks the other article is badly misquoted.
I don't understand why companies like this don't opt for just sticking with redundant online storage as opposed to offline such as this. With online, as you upgrade over the years, your archived data gets moved along with, and thus you've no worries about obsolescence of your media or reader. I've heard the argument that the storage space is too costly, though that wouldn't seem to pan out. As time goes by, the MB/GB/TB per dollar will increase, and that data you have archived will become trivial in size pretty quickly. I would think, at least in this sort of application, that a good SAN (where storage is essentially abstracted) would negate the need for this.
If it works that's some pretty impressive technology but I suspect it has a few problems that aren't mentioned that are currently impossible to solve. What makes me think this is the way that all the major electronic manufacturers aren't falling over themselves to buy this company or developer their own version. If this really worked the first person to market would make a fortune. Who knows, maybe they have soved the difficult problems. It would be good if they had.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
People once said the same thing about blue laser hd-dvd's. And, before that, they were saying it about DVD too.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wow. That comment really makes you sit back and shake your head in amazement.
Not so long ago, we were talking about which drives gave the best cost per megabyte.
Now we're talking about cost per terabyte.
Simply amazing.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
They figure out how to get managed copy on holographic storage, they'll make the transition
Okay, FTFA:
1.6TB disc for $100 in 5 years (we'll assume Q4 2010)
Hard drive prices per unit of storage have dropped about 50% per year, give or take a bit.
(reality check - $80-90 for a 120GB drive was a good price last year at this time, I just got a 250GB drive for $93 last week; in 1987, a 20GB drive was $400, about $20/MB, today, its about $3.72x10-4/MB, about 45% per year)
So, lets bring that FV back to PV -> $100 in 5 years at (conservatively) 45%. I get about $2000 in today's techmology prices.
Bad news: $2000/1.6TB just isn't very sexy...or cost effective. A quick Google search reveals the LaCie 1.6TB FW800 tower for $1400. Now, you'll have to live with only 55MB/sec transfer speed, but it is a plug-and-play solution from a well-known manufacturer. And it's here today.
Am I full of shit? I don't think so, and apparently my very unscientific numbers above are borne out by Kryder's Law which holds that HDD size is doublling every 13 months. By 2010, we should expect about 8TB on the biggest hard drives, and the "sweet spot" for price - in the $100 range - for 4TB drives. With the (currenly available) SATA II interface, the bus speed maxes out at 300MB/sec, though drive speeds are behind.
Now, that's not to say that holographic storage won't take off, but at the proposed numbers they're throwing out, its going to be the read speed and possible space or (more likely) power consumption that makes them viable. The $/storageunit is not going to be a compelling argument whan compared to traditional spinning platters for several years to come, at least.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I was chatting with one of the engineers regarding this at the National Association of Broadcasters show this year. Apparently, they were just getting things finished off and ready for what was their latest generation of holographic storage. One thing that was interesting is that the maximum data rate was just under the data rate for 720p/1080i (around 680Mbit/s versus ~750Mbit/s). I mentioned to him that he should really try to get the data rate up so that they could record and play back live HD material, but things were apparently wrapped up pretty well by the time I had talked to him. He mentioned a large network that wanted to use this for long-term storage and retrieval of video, presumably to reduce the necessity for large tape robots like StorageTek provides.
A couple of other interesting facts about the device - the rotational rate of the device is actually extremely slow. You wouldn't see it spinning or even barely moving unless you really looked at it. They use Ultra320SCSI as an electrical interface to the discs. These guys were co-promoting with Maxell in the Maxell booth itself on the media that's in these large cartridges similar to the old MO discs, but larger. The holodiscs themselves were about half an inch thick and were completely transparent, and had excellent archival characteristics and stability (>100 years IIRC). The drives themselves were about the size of a two-drive external SCSI drive box, but fairly long (probably around a foot or slightly longer) and black in color. Media was something like $179 per disc and the drives themselves were $6k-$10k, IIRC. Finally, I asked him why they wouldn't just put the disc into a cube format (read: all your information on your keychain), but he mentioned that the translational control of the cube to read and write the information would be overly complicated electromechanically though it could technically be done.
My guess is that you won't see this technology filter down to the average joe for at least 5-7 years. Hopefully it'll be worth the wait.
Graphic on InPhase Technologies website: "Imagine Holding 100 movies in the palm of your hand"
*riiing*
Secretary: "Hello InPhase Technologies, may I help you?"
Secretary: "Oh hello Mr. Glickman of the MPAA"
Secretary: "Our CEO Mr. Diaz is in a meeting at the moment, may I take a message?"
Secretary: "So the message is 'No...effen...way' ?"
this company and their FMD's? Its really too bad this never took off, it wouldve been amazing.
"and by 2010, it will have capacity of 1.6TB each" yeah by 2010 we wan't even care about terabytes, look in 1998 i got a new computer with a 6.4gb hard drive, in 2002 i broke 750gb of drive space, in my personal computer! so in 2010 no one will care. "Optware's technology works by shining a green laser through the disk and then recording data in the polymer resin." Don't scratch that sucker! you'd be screwed big time LMAO, whatever happened to those old school CD catridge things anyway.
The number you get is not 177 Mbs per second, it is 177 MBps (Mega Bytes per second as you say), whyle the number from CNet is 19.25 Mbps (mega bits per second), and it refers to MPEG2 compression of the stream.
In this case there is plenty of bandwidth available because 19.25 Mbps = 2.40 MBps < 27 MBps. In any case, MPEG4 compression can do much lower bitrates for HDTV video, but I strongly doubt that they will use any kind of lossy compression for their stored archive video.
At 300GB it's still a short generation behind the latest harddrives at 500GB. Although with compression it might serve as a convenient backup medium with a 1:1 relationship to the media being backed up -- provided it's cheap, user writiable, and durable. Would be nice.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Ted Turner's just a hologram. ;-)
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
What ever happened to the "revolutionary new high density storage medium" of saving holograms on crystal planes announced back in the late '60s.
I work in a computational theory group and our entire problem is volume; definitely not speed. I don't quite understand where it all comes from but the data just sprawls and sprawls; I'm using a relatively modest 200Gigs and certainly need much more. Anyway, having more room would definitely increase the efficiency of my work. I wouldn't have to zip/unzip stuff as I need it, or move it between long/short term storage or off site unmounted servers. So, in this respect volume is speed.
46 & 2
Only problem with holographic memory is that sequential erasure will not work. You'd have to feed it a tapeworm to selectively seek out and destroy unwanted data.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Of course the first few models of publicly available writers will write horribly slow. Can you imagine writing 300gb of video at 2x?
Create project
Click Burn
Come back in a few days
... what did you expect, something profound?
http://holoforum.com/
large discussion website on holographics, blu-ray, hd-dvd, displays, etc.
obligatory text
I'd call that a typo. His final math does come out to megabytes per second (MB/s) but he typoed it to Mbs.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
That sounds good in theory, but PLEASE don't forget to discount the old (scary), the young (jail time) and, of course, the family (NObody wants to see that.
:)
That said, get to it already, thought you'll want 300-500kb per image for quality control purposes.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Did anyone else read that as Turing Testing Holographic Storage?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why do you think that MPEG2 is not lossy?
http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/pop_image/mag_content/2 0051027180049/ta_fig2.jpg
from: Asakawa, Naoki, Holography Accelerates towards Terabyte Discs, Nikkei Electronics Asia, E Asia NOV 2005 Issue
Chris Mellor, Holographic storage slow: Has holo storage got the write speed needed? TechWorld, November 21, 2005. "The InPhase Tapestry holographic storage device is expected to debut next year. It will store 300GB and transfer data at 20MB/sec. That means 1.2GB/min and 72GB/hour. It will take four hours to write 288GB. That's quite a long time..." http://www.techworld.com/storage/features/index.cf m?featureid=1990&inkc=0