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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.