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GE Introduces 500GB Holographic Disks
bheer writes "According to the NYTimes, at a conference next month, GE will debut their new holographic storage breakthrough — 500GB disks that will cost 10 cents a GB to produce at launch. GE will first focus on selling the technology to commercial markets like movie studios and hospitals, but selling to the broader corporate and consumer market is the larger goal."
"This could be the next generation of low-cost storage," said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.
The G.E. development, however, could be that pioneering step, according to analysts and experts.
So a player that could read microholographic storage discs could also read CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. But holographic discs, with the technology G.E. has attained, could hold 500 gigabytes of data.
You guys remember that cool new technology that was going to revolutionize the way we store data? The one that was just 11 years away? Well we could be one year closer to that realization today perhaps maybe.
People that know more than you and might even be experts possibly speculated that this might be a reality within some amount of time. It brings me great joy to announce to you that now we're maybe in the ballpark. You yourself have the chance to be alive when this thing hits. And it could be big.
Perhaps tomorrow it will be in my computer or the fabrication process might not ever be cheaply implemented and then we could wait longer than five years possibly. "It's so tantalizingly exciting but still just over that next hill we think," is what I said last year and now look. I may have been correct or at least within one standard deviation of time for this product.
This is exciting to the point that I very well may scream. I think now is the time to possibly ask yourself: are you ready for what might turn into something big? Because it could be around the corner.
My work here is dung.
$0.10/gb * 500 GB = $50. I can buy a 1 TB hard drive for around $80. Why would I use this stuff?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Will this hologram technology be capable of storing a Holoduke?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
1 terra byte drives cost around $100. That is 10 cents a gig at retail. So they cost less than 10 cents a gig to manufacture.
They word the pricing to make it sound attractive, only 10c/GB, but that makes this 500GB disk a hideously expensive $50! That's too much.
By the time this tech comes out, that will be orders of magnitude more than HD prices. Maybe even flash storage will be cheaper by then.
The real question is how robust the things are to scratches and other negative environmental effects. If it has to be enclosed in a case like the old Zip disks were, then it's effectively a fancy hard drive in a smaller and lighter format.(though slower by a huge margin I'd bet).
Unless it's as damage resistant as a normal CD or DVD, it's not going to make a blip in the marketplace.
...and it'll store it Forever too!
how the hell has OCZ's new 1TB 500MB/s PCI-E flash (http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_z_drive_pci_express_ssd) drives not gotten a mention anywhere that ive seen.
Yes ill probably get modded off topic, but it seems to me it's managed to fall below the radar where it shouldnt have
High density discs and have been a PR staple for years. I'm still waiting for one announced in '99. Yes, disc capacity will increase gradually and at some point today's fat Blu-Rays will be hopelessly limited curios, but the trick isn't so much about jamming bits into ever smaller sectors as it is creating compatibility with installed player bases, burner ecosystems and jittery rights holders. GE doesn't come to mind as a company with experience getting that done, nevermind getting such consumer products in the stores or even out of the lab. Good luck guys but I don't see it happening.
- js.
If you look at all the projected lifetimes of Fe-LiNiO3 devices, which I guess is they system they are talking about in their glorified press releases, they are supposed to be around 100 years at operating temperatures! Compare that to the 30 some years of DVD-R media!
Though it still isn't as good as some chalcogenide based phase change materials which are predicted to last for 100's of years, it is important step in keeping our data around.
i dont buy that. in the uk the fastest provider is probably virgin who offer a 50Mbps connection, that is only 1.5Mbps up. Once you consider the requirements to leave a connection up long enugh, and for it to be realiable long enough to transfer, say, the 4.5GB of a DVD, its still easier to transfer it on a DVD, and we are still far far from 500GB being reasonable over current internet speed, even over a 100Mbps LAN it would take helava time
How long does it take you to transfer 250 GB to the other side of town?
There is no real reason that archival media and rewritable media should be used in the same ways.
If you want guaranteed longevity, used existing bulk archival. That works. If, on the other hand, this is not rewritable, then the point is moot, isn't it?
We need a stock bump.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
So that whirring spinning noise coming from my DVD player is just a trapped hamster then ?
CDs can store more than an hour of uncompressed audio, yet here we are 20 years after music CDs hit the market and they still contain the same 35-40 minutes of music as vinyl records.
The movie industry's way of coping with DVDs that can store far more than one movie has been to put one movie on a DVD, and load up the extra space with previews, outtakes, commentary, and all kinds of other crap that's not a movie.
How will the movie industry handle a DVD that can store 100 movies? Maybe by grouping them, for example the Star Trek series or films by the same director or main actor. But based on history I'm guessing won't put more than 5 or 6 movies on a disc plus hours and hours of "bonus" material.
It is the year 2109 and they have just released a disc that can hold all the data ever created by mankind. Now selling in 50 and 100 packs.
The manifest absurdity of it is too obvious to require explanation
Blu-ray Disc also uses "disc", as does the DVD Forum's semi-official expansion of DVD as "digital versatile disc". The pattern here is that optical storage uses "disc", while magnetic storage uses "disk".
And, of course, the 1990s-era magneto-optical "disck" completes the taxonomy.
sigs are hazardous to your health
... creating compatibility with ... jittery rights holders. GE doesn't come to mind as a company with experience getting that done, ...
Huh?
GE is one of the six conglomerates that, together, own 90% of the media in the US. It's big on movies, broadcasting, cable, news, ... For starters it owns NBC and Universal. See Wikipedia for a more complete list.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In keeping with the device described in TFA, let's keep with as much current technology as possible. At 70 bit per electron, an iron atom could carry 227 bytes plus a 4 bit checksum. As iron oxide, each molecule would have 34 electrons, giving 297 bytes plus checksum. It would take 3367003367 molecules of iron oxide to carry a terabyte. What's the density of iron oxide on a disk in terms of molecules per given area?
****
1.1x10^22 atoms per gram of iron. I get 3,276,000,000 Terrabytes in a milligram of iron stored this way. (3.276 Zettabytes if I'm counting the number of zeros on my calculator correctly.)
Note - this might blow a hole in the idea of quantum limits on computing if we move from atoms to electrons.
Based on this post, it's been done for 10 years :-).
Oh, now be fair. He didn't once utter the phrases, "What?", "I don't understand" or "Where's the tea?"
-FL