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Turner Testing Holographic Storage

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the as-the-world-turners dept.

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.

15 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. A few years down the road... by w.p.richardson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mmmmmm... vapor...

    --

    Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!

    1. Re:A few years down the road... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yup, one day I'll be playing Duke Nukem Forever on a Phantom console, streamed from Holographic storage, and displayed directly on my wall that's papered with Electronic Ink.

    2. Re:A few years down the road... by n0d3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You do realize that inphase actually has working prototypes. Turner is actually TESTING it allready.

      Secondly, E-Ink is real. Sony has made a book like reader device with it. The reason you don't see it everywhere is because the creators (among Philips) doesn't think it's ready (speedwise they are improving still) but more importantly they don't wanna go all out until it has color. Nobody wants black and white screens anymore. Oh and yes, they are quite advanced with that aswell.

      And Duke Nukem forever will arrive ... some day : )

  2. But is it 'Perpendicular'? by Burz · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's all I want to know. :-)

  3. Holographic? by carguy84 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Holographic? by Cochonou · · Score: 4, Informative

      This might not be a typo, if they are talking about writing speed. Most holographic storage technologies depend on chemical reactions for recording. These reactions are a very serious limiting factor to writing speed.
      On the other hand, reading speed can be tremendous. You get a full page of data for each reading operation. Some people will say you can read "at the speed of light", because all it takes to extract a page of data is to let diffract a laser beam through the holographic media. This is not completely true, as you still have to convert the data from its original optical form to an electronic form suitable for computer. This is usually done using arrays of CCD or CMOS detectors, and their speed is the limiting factor when reading data.

      If I can get a hand on several documents that I know to be hiding somewhere on my computer, I will post actual speed figures which might give you a better idea of the typical transfer rates.

    2. Re:Holographic? by Cochonou · · Score: 4, Informative

      A bit of followup : this might not be the bleeding-edge figures, as I suppose there have been further advances in the meantime.
      I know that a CMOS detector integration speed of 1ms has been reached several years ago on holographic RAM (I am not talking here about holographic disks). As the integration speed is the limiting factor during the readout, that means you roughly read 1000 pages of data per second.
      Usually, these pages of data are arrays of 1024x1024 values, coded on 256 different brighness levels (therefore equivalent to 8 bits, or one byte). That means you can get a reading speed of 1GB/s on that technology.

      However, I think most of the research nowadays is turned towards holographic disks, because they are more suited to the "write once slowly, read many times quickly" behaviour of holographic memory. The main problem here is to find (or create) an holographic material suitable for this usage. So far, data density has been much lower in holographic disks than in holographic RAM because of this issue.

    3. Re:Holographic? by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well let us work it out ok.

      HDTV Screen Size is 1920 * 1080 = 2,073,600 so that is the number of pixels on the highest quality HDTV
      2,073,600 Pixels * 30 FPS (Frames per second for DVD Playback) = 62,208,000 Pixels / Second
      Pixel is 24 bits * 62,208,000 Pixels / Second = 1,492,992,000 Bits / Second
      They are 8 bits in a byte so 1,492,992,000 / 8 = 186,624,000 Bytes / second
      1024 Bytes in a Kilo Byte 186,624,000 Bytes/second / 1024 = 182,250 KB/Seconond
      1024 Kilo Bytes in a Mega Byte = 177 Mbs per second. So for screens of random data where no compression can take place that is correct.

      But the tough part to prove because I don't have the numbers is the average rate of data compression per movie. If we are able to keep compression at an average of 1/6 then we could do it. CNET.com states that HDTV Requires 19.25Mbps for HDTD transmission so I guess it does do the trick.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. 8" floppies anyone? by ian_mackereth · · Score: 4, Interesting
    They'd better hope this technology takes off, or they're going to have lots of terabytes of inaccessible storage in a few years, when the spares for their readers run out...

    Mind you, this is hardly a unique problem, only a large-scale concentration of a wide-spread one.

  5. Speed, not size by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Speed, not size by hoggoth · · Score: 4, Funny

      > I want a 100GB recordable disc for under $1.

      And a pony. I want a pony too.

      --
      - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
  6. That's not interesting by DavidHOzAu · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  7. Re:Yay! by Patrik_AKA_RedX · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's 1.6 million pictures of breasts. Considering that there are 86400 seconds in a day, you have to see 18.5 pictures/second to see them all each day.
    The refresh rate on a monitor these days is 90Hz, so it can display 90 images/second or 7,776,000 images per day. With other words you need 5 of such disks to make full use of you computer and that's even without using dual screen, or higher refresh rates. We still have a long way to go.

  8. Before you just dismiss it by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Mmmmmm... vapor...

    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.
  9. Re:To Little To Late by suso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, they have been talking about holographic storage for almost 20 years now and one would have thought it would have been here 5 years ago with a TB or more of storage, which would have been something. But now they are saying 1.6TB by 2010. Come on. Hard drives in 2010 will probably be 1.6TB or more.