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Microholography Could Lead to 500 GB Discs
angrykeyboarder writes "Scientists have discovered a way to fit 500 GB of data onto DVD-sized discs. These discs would be created with a process called 'microholography, which combines multilayer storage of data with holographic imagery. From the article: 'Microholography allows data to be stored in three dimensions. The technology works by replacing the two-dimensional pit-land structures currently found on CDs and DVDs with microgratings, which are holographically induced using two laser beams. In other words, instead of recording to a series of bumps and pits like standard CDs, the new technology creates three-dimensional holographic grids that can be used for reading and writing data throughout the physical structure of the disc.'"
... if you scratch one of these? :-
Please no. Can someone tell them to stop working on CDs already? Seriously, HD-DVD is no more than a smaller vinyl. We've got the same technology for over 100 years and they're still trying to "improve" it?
Can someone already remove all the moving (spinning) parts of my laptop? I really do not see the point of including 3 different motors in a XXI century technology.
I've always found DVDs/CDs too large. Yes, they make mini-cdrs and mini-dvds (I used to have a Sony CD Mavica) but they don't have the protective case the minidiscs had. Some things are just ergonomically right, and I regret that we didn't go a little further in that direction.
Once your bored of them you can use them as a holodeck in your ant farm :)
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
In Spain we have to pay an average of 40 c. for every 100 megas in DVDs to the SGAE what it is the equivalent of the RIAA in The USA.
...
1. Microholograph?
2. 500 Gb DVDs!?
2.
3. Profit!
...for these disks. Will need 10GB for the movie itself, and 490GB for the DRM software.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
More storage makes it easier to tak backups but with more storage I will also store more data and then the backups will get larger and.. :(
+1 Agree -1 Disagree
He has a good point. The tech seems cool and all especially for long term storage but solid state is the real future. Battery life is still pretty poor for most devices and many people are moving away from the desktop. I personally don't own a desktop anymore and just hook my laptop up to a keyboard, monitor, and mouse when at home or work. I foresee the desktop dying except for hardcore gamers and servers. If I'm correct then spinning media doesn't make sense. Motors drain battery life and increase latency while throwing in a mechanical cog that can fail.
... a thousand times. The traditional 2D-technology is uncompetitive since the end of the 1990s.
The cutting edge of optical disks are HD-DVDs als BR-Discs with up to 50 Gigs, but even todays
harddisks can store an entire terabyte of data. At the beginning one or two CD-Rs where able to
store the content of a common harddisk, today you would need dozens of expensive BR-Discs to
backup all that stuff. A holographic storage system with 500 Gigs or more should be the past,
not the future. The industry failed at this point. They try to sell us an old, but badly advanced
technology from yesterday.
I hope this is chance for Newcomers. New smaller companies with good and really innovative
products. But my fear is that the power in public relations of the present giants of the market
will prevent it. Wouldn't be the first time that bad technology wins the race.
Come on, we get these announcements every few weeks, but nobody ever delivers a product. This isn't even news for nerds, it is just vaporware. Wake me up when they create a product that I can actually buy.
Optical media is garbage and always has been and is an overly fragile way to store data. It's only redeeming feature is once the discs get bellow $1 they effectively become disposeable.
In another year or so, flash chips will reach a price point that'll make them a cost effective alternative for buying movies on DVD's, they've already reached that point for music CD's.
Once the industry notices that, and gets over their DRM OCD, I say good riddance to optical media.
A company called Constellation 3D developed "Fluorescent Multilayer" disks about 6 or 7 years ago. They even had a working prototype if I recall correctly. Followed the story for a while and then the company went bankrupt due to an investor pulling out (mugs!) Even back then they said they would produce first gen products of 120GB. There's even a WIKI history...... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_3D Surely we should have moved away from a spinning disk by now!
Good! Now let's make two incompatible standards out of it, start a formats war, and sell the same old films to the same old people again, in both formats if possible.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Interesting....NOT
a qoute from wiki is that it will improve piracy protecion
"HD-DMD enables dramatic improvements in piracy protection, by taking advantage of the multiple layers of information."
They still never learn, what was made by man shall be cracked by man.
I hope they have two new competing formats!
Seriously though, they have been talking about huge storage disks since we discovered round plastic circles. Yeah, they've been getting higher data densities, but if you look at the progression of other storage formats (especially hard drives) optical is just not keeping up. By the time we get 500Gb disks, they'll sound to us much like yesteryear's 40Gb disks sound to us now compared to our 500+Gb hard drives.
lol: You see no door there!
They cost 18K for the drive and $300 for the discs.
They are expensive now, but when they drop they will make it worthwhile.
All of the Simpsons, the Complete Bach, the complete Mozart, the complete Beethoven all together on one disc.
Holographic Memories; Scientific American, November 1995, by Psaltis & Mok
It does make some sense to spin a disk rather than reorient the beam. But a solid crystal holographic storage device not only has lots of locations within itself to store collections of data, but can also be turned on a turntable and have the beam attack it from different directions, storing more data in the same place but at a different angle.
3D holographic storage design has another benefit -- it is self-searching via "reverse" holography. You shine a laser off a target and let it reflect to the memory, and out comes as many copies of the reference beam as their are stored data sets (with a realistic situation of most dissimilar results being buried in noise). Each beam is proportional to the strength of the reference beam according to the similarity of the dataset it came from. You can pick the strongest if you want to find the closest match, or you can statistically test the range of beam strengths to check for uniqueness of the target, or any number of things. The search process is virtually instantaneous, the speed of getting the result limited only by the speed of the measuring and calculating processes.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Not very easy to scratch all the disks at the same time if one is in your office, another in your car and the other at your cousin's place.
I had a MDH-10, an external scsi-device using 140MB per disc. For more information, see http://www.minidisc.org/md_data_table.html They even had digital cameras use discs! Unfortunately, sony has a bad track record in coming up with their own formats and formfactors.
Harald
500GB is a LOT of data. Great for backups, perhaps for storing raw video footage and so on, but hard to justify for distributing data or for sneakernet uses.
A minidisc equivalent would be what, 100GB or so? That is a very viable proposition. Credit card sized discs would be quite popular too. Solid state equivalence is a long way off.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Microholography Could Lead to 999 TB Discs --- well, it could.
I'm willing to say, Microholography Could Lead to 999,999,999,999,999,999 TB Discs. All of these statements are true, yet meaningless.
A frozen pig could fly out of the poster's arse too. well, it could happen, right?
Mod me troll, please.
I guess the 4 terabyte flash disk will come sooner than I thought. As seen here http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_037.html
The only problem I see is that at a rate of 200Mb/sec as stated in the article, it would take over 11 hours to fill a 1TB disk!
I don't know how many times a disc has become unreadable because the TOC was damaged. You can have all the parity data in the world, if the TOC is gone you're screwed. :(
If only there were a DVD format writable/readable with consumer-grade drives that had multiple redundant TOCs.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?