Maxell will ship its first holographic storage system late next year, the company has pledged. The storage specialist will initially offer a removable system based on 300GB media and capable of transfering data at a rate of 20MBps, Maxell said. However, the company said the technology, designed by InPhase Technologies, is capable of achieving 1.6TB per disk – and that’s uncompressed capacity – with a 120MBps bandwidth.
I’ve only been wanting something like this since I was 15. What’s taken you people so long?
Profit-first, non-collaboration, IP Rights, Copyright, Patents, DMCA and corporate thinking.
Oh no! They’re operating like pretty much every company in recorded history! Burn them!
“Oh no! They’re operating like pretty much every company in recorded history! Burn them!”
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem with it.
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem with it.”
Unfortunately some define the problem as “were’s my free stuff?”
This is when I make the comment about your age…. Has to be done…
So you’ve been waiting a year?
…will it run linux?
I wonder how reliable these “disks” are. Are they based on current flash technology, which has a limited number of writes? The use for such a device as the main mass storage of a computer is quite different, and quite heavier, than in a CF/SD/MMC card for a camera or handheld.
“Are they based on current flash technology”
I don’t mean to be rude, but perhaps you should check a dictionary for the definition of “holographic.”
Edited 2005-11-24 19:51
He could have also thought about actually reading through some of the links provided, that may have also been a good start.
I don’t think “being rude” comes in to it.
Lazarus is right, flash drives right now have nothing to do with holographic anything.
Secondly while flash drives do have a limited number of writes, I’ve had some for years and they still work; in fact, they’re reliable enough to use instead of hard drives and the absense of moving parts tends to give them more durability.
Hard drives really don’t last as long as they should any more, and flash drives are already being used in home made computers instead of hard drives. For that matter it’s quite possible that a flash drive used in place of a hard drive could last longer, especially if a computer has enough ram to reduce or eliminate swapping to the hdd.
I’ve also heard that flash drives are faster than hard drives, although they probably don’t store as much yet and would probably still cost more for the same amount of space.
It’s still in DISC format. Discs are annoying as hell. They are slow just like Hard drives.
http://www.inphase-technologies.com/technology/
If you dig around there you will see some video of a holographic CARD which would be read by a steerable laser.
I LIKE !!!!!
“If you dig around there you will see some video of a holographic CARD which would be read by a steerable laser.”
Uhm, you’ve still got a moving part there that limits the speed that you can read/write data. What exactly is gained again?
Media with corners?
Rotating discs are slooooow. Mirrors should be much faster. Don’t we make some good tv’s now with mirrors ? Imagine a tv that needed a big spinning disc to produce the image.
The next revolution will be pure solid state like Flash but faster.
OT: ever heard of the Nipkow disc?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipkow_disc
TVs do use dics to make images. You should look into single chip DLP tvs( most of the DLP sets on the market), they use a color wheel spininng really fast to produce color images from a single DMD.
all my movies in one disc…. HOLY CRAP!!!
and we have been hearing about this tecnology for at least 5 year!
5 YEARS!!
itch!!!!!! thas a lot of time…
anyway, imagin the price……
and if they are going to put this in late 2006, then why the hd-dvd and blueray!? i mean, wait a few more mounts…..
dbz
It seems massive advances are gained every month in optical computing. Optical computing is also the only real ‘quantum-leap’ that’s realistic on the short (within next 2 decades) term. Quantumcomputing runs into more problems each month than it solves per month, DNA-computing is just theoretical, and multiprocessing is nice, but just a linear advance.
umm, you mean non-linear.
linear advantage would mean that the more you add the better the machine performs.
Multi-processors are a logarithmic advances in computing power… at some point, the return in system performance levels off.
or did you mean advance as in the next step int eh same line of technology?
But then, lets be realistic, even today, the computing power that there is available is still and overkill for many people – what should be concerntrated on is removing bottle necks in the computer – no use having the world fastest processor if everything is still getting pulled of a disk rotating at 10,000rpm.
Well I guess that answers the question “how do I backup a terrabyte hard drive”?
With a removable hard drive of equal size probably.
You know what? You’re right. Moving the whole disk makes the things slow and more susceptible to wear. At the very least, a card would be better. If we’re talking about plastic doped with photosensitive chemicals, you could make a cube of the stuff, and use mirrors to focus a laser beam where you wanted to read or write. That way, you’d have fewer moving parts and faster I/O, and you could cram more storage space into a smaller physical volume. Oh, and fragmentation would stop being such an issue.
Can I use this with Linux?
That’s a slightly silly question. First of all, nothing is released yet. Second of all, it’s mass-storage, and even if drivers need to be written, you can bet your ass someone will want to write one for Linux, since high-end server solutions will want both this disc and Linux.
can they scale the sucker down so that it can be used as a replacement for the floppy? and whats the cost of the individual media?
and is it fully RW? as in i can go back, delete some files and have the space freed up? do that on a RW cd/dvd today and you dont get a freed up space, you get a rewritten TOC. only way of deleting data of a RW cd/dvd is by fully erasing it…
Ahhhhh finally, all the seasons of X-Files on one disc, including the movies, cut-scenes, and the 4GB of bonuses… We are gonna spend hours in front of the screen eating pizzas…
MMMmmm… I will start a bussiness where HDV rental includes delivery of pizzas…
According to the article they Maxell/InPhase Technologies are in competition with “the HVD Alliance”. It’s going to be yet another format war.
Intial 300GB, 20MB/s up to 1.6 TB, 120 MB/s
verus initial “200GB recordable disc and a 100GB read-only disc” up to 3.9 TB, 1 Gbit/s (~128 MB/s).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc
I guess it’ll depend on costs (and release date, if ever) whether HD-DVD and Blu-Ray still stand a chance.
_V_
By hobgoblin on 2005-11-24 22:12:07 UTC
can they scale the sucker down so that it can be used as a replacement for the floppy? and whats the cost of the individual media?
and is it fully RW? as in i can go back, delete some files and have the space freed up? do that on a RW cd/dvd today and you dont get a freed up space, you get a rewritten TOC. only way of deleting data of a RW cd/dvd is by fully erasing it…
————
But you don’t have to with DVD-RAM.
Don’t hold your breath; this format will not be for ‘regular joe’ anytime soon. They will be targeting it at enterprises who can pay the big bucks – and who need a product like this more than Average Joe – because it *saves them money*.
Neither do you with DVD+RW
so your saying that with either a dvd-ram disc or a dvd+rw disc i can delete files in the middle of the disc and reclaim the space it used without the need for a full format of the disc?
hmm, maybe those formats have a potential use after all then
Holography has latency like Hdrives but they have alot higher data rates due to reading more than one bit of disc like other mediums like cd/dvd/hard drvs.
” Customer shipments of the 300 GB InPhase Tapestry product will commence in 2006, representing the initial offering in the family of InPhase holographic drives and media, which have capacities ranging up to 1.6 terabytes (TB) and data rates of 960 Mb/s. “
Mbps, not MB.
120/8 = 15MB/sec for 1.6TB, are they serious?
1.6TB ~ 1600000MB
/15 = 106666sec ~ 30hours
(ok ok, I know, it’s new technology and 1.6TB isn’t so small capacity)
It is MBps not Mbps – strange marketing though, considering the industry refers to megabit/second that would look more impressive in print.
…isn’t bad. I wish someone would develop some sort of completely new, perhaps solid-state, form of data storage. I mean memory that is tiny with gigantic capacity.
Sorry if this is too off-topic. I guess I am not hyper excited by the announcement and feel like we should be getting further along in hardware end of things.
since holography is an analogue technology and never loses the data even if your cut the image in two.
then you get two less sharp images.
all this is is optical storage media that has non-colinear and even non-coplaner storage locations on the same media. It is fantastic, but it is not holographic.
since holography is an analogue technology and never loses the data even if your cut the image in two.
then you get two less sharp images.
all this is is optical storage media that has non-colinear and even non-coplaner storage locations on the same media. It is fantastic, but it is not holographic.
Actually, it is. Two lasers are directioned so that their interference pattern is recorded in the polymer-filled gap between the two cover layers. Recording the interference pattern is what defines holography. Of course, this doesnt mean that the _whole _ disk is one of those 3d-images: the hologram is strictly speaking the region where the two lasers interfere, and if you follow the links you’ll discover that they call each a ‘page’ of about 1.3 megabits, and then I suppose the disk all divided is such pages much like ordinary sectors/tracks. And yes, since each page is a hologram, that means that if part of it is damaged, of that page you should only lose part of the Fourier transform. The whole bunch of data, that is of course analogic, can probably still be infered when converting to digital during reading… this should offer opportunities for a solid error-correcting system that makes this kind of medie quite reliable.
The computing power is overkill ? Ho no no no no… Even the “average” user need more power, to edit family movies in DV/HDV (lots of CPU, lots of storage needed), store digital pictures in RAW (12Mo/pic) and edit it (filters, even the fast ones in photoshop, are not so fast), browse the web faster (kidding
…
Correct me if i’m wrong, but isn’t a transfer rate of 20MB/sec a bit too slow for such a technology ?
It’s probably me, used to scsi (50MB/sec), but i mean its been ~5 years with this in development, and many more years in hard disks and other storage technology, i’d expected something faster than 20MB/sec.
“isn’t a transfer rate of 20MB/sec a bit too slow for such a technology ?”
That’s what I thought until I realised that currently DVD drives only just reach that speed. Think of it like a single speed holographic drive. Do you own (and use) a single speed DVD or CD drive (other than standalone)?
_V_
Correct me if i’m wrong, but isn’t a transfer rate of 20MB/sec a bit too slow for such a technology ?
——–
No, not considering the alternatives.
There are many corporations that need to archive heaps of data *and* have relatively quick random access to it. It’s not like they will be copying whole discs to HDs or something. The alternatives are many HDs (which are definitely not for archival) and tape drives. There’s not much that competes with it when you add up all the advantages. A format like this will likely save companies heaps of time archiving gobs of data and save them lots of (physical) space doing it (and save them time accessing it on-demand when they’re done).
Companies will jump at the chance of purchasing a drive like this. Random access with high enough speeds with ridiculously large archival storage. Great stuff! InPhase/Maxell aren’t the only companies doing holographic storage so it will be interesting to suss out the competition in this field, namely http://www.optware.co.jp
RE[2]: Re: Hmm…
By hobgoblin on 2005-11-25 21:18:47 UTC in reply to “RE: Re: Hmm…”
so your saying that with either a dvd-ram disc or a dvd+rw disc i can delete files in the middle of the disc and reclaim the space it used without the need for a full format of the disc?
hmm, maybe those formats have a potential use after all then
———–
DVD-RAM you can – natively. Just like a USB key or whatever. DVD+RW (or -RW for that matter) you can definitely NOT (not without unreliable packet-writing software).