Holographic storage — for $18,000
p2pnet news | Cool Stuff:- More than four years ago, “In 1974, Mike Thomas was making five-meg disk packs – the biggest in the world, at the time. But IBM, Burroughs, Honeywell and other major computer makers said no one would ever need that much storage,” said p2pnet, going on:
“In 1989, Bill Gates said a PC would never need more than 256 kbytes of cache memory and 40 megabytes of hard drive storage. And yet today’s PC has on average 64 megabytes of cache and 20 to 60 gigabyte hard drives.
“In short, Thomas predicted the need for mega storage systems in 1974, and he’s still at it. In fact, as far as he’s concerned, the need isn’t diminishing – it’s increasing.”
That was the intro and we continued >>>
Imagine a computer with amazing processing power, a 3D display (literally, not figuratively) instant response, able to run every available OS and application at the same time, virtually no power consumption, zero moving parts and complete security – and whose physical component is about the size of a pack of playing cards.
That’s not all.
It would also hold every music CD and movie DVD you ever owned, or will own, and still leave space for not only your family album, but your brother’s, sister’s, aunt’s and uncle’s too.
And no more expensive upgrades. As better designs and firmware became available, you’d simply send the Optocom back to the maker and its holographic circuitry would be re-programmed with new circuits and firmware.
Optocom? It reads like science fiction but it’s short for Optical Computer, and it’s based on firm science fact, says Michael Thomas, inventor of the atomic holographic nanotechnology that will make it possible
And it would only cost about $1,000.
A holographic drive, in other words, the first prototype of which Thomas says should be ready by the end of the decade, if not sooner.
And while we wait, Tapestry, from InPhase Technologies , “was demonstrated at the NAB2008 show in Las Vegas earlier this month,” says The Register.
It’s a holographic storage system which, says the story, will be officially announced next month.
The bare facts, the story goes on, are these >>>
Tapestry consists of 120mm (5.25-inch) diameter clear plastic disks in a cartridge case. Holographic images are stored in the depth of the recording medium on the disk’s surface using a blue laser.
The first disks are said to have a 50-year life and will perform reads and writes at 20MB/sec in a Tapestry drive which appears to be priced at $18,000. The disks will cost $180 each in volume and store up to 300GB.
“Subsequent generations of WORM devices will increase capacity to 800GB and transfer rate to 80MB/sec and then to 1.6TB and 120MB/sec,” InPhase says on its web site, states the Register, adding:
A quick set of comparisons and contrasts looks like this:
LTO3 is four times faster than Tapestry and holds 100GB more but tape is not guaranteed to hold data for 50 years and needs its contents re-written to fresh media every so often. It is also not a random access medium, somewhat negating its faster I/O.
Blu-ray optical disks hold 25GB or 50GB and so have an immediate capacity disadvantage. They are, of course, cheaper but they are not promoted as having a 50-year life. That may change.
Plasmon’s UDO has a capacity disadvantage, holding 60GB in its generation 2 version with UDO-3 set at 120GB and UDO-4 at 240GB on the roadmap. It does have a 50-year life but UDO-2 has a slower 12MB/sec I/O rate. UDO is also in use and not a version 1 product.
It would seem that InPhase will have the high-capacity, 50-year archive store market pretty much to itself for a few years.
Perhaps not, though.
Is Thomas worried by the appearance of Tapestry?
“Not at all,” he told p2pnet, explaining he expects his first protoype to be in hand sometime around 2010.
“I want holographic storage from any and all companies to start appearing because this helps the market evolve,” he says.
“I’ve already emailed to InPhase congratulating them on their technology.”
Definitely stay tuned.
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.Stumble It!
p2pnet – Every file you ever owned on 1 disc, February 25, 2004
The Register – InPhase finally to phase in holographic disk, April 26, 2008
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April 30th, 2008 at 11:22 am
We won’t need holographic storage.
Canadian ISP’s don’t allow innovation.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Five years ago, I was discussing those rental storage places, because were using one to hold our stuff during a move.
I remarked that the future, people would be paying for digital storage, and that future houses would come equipped with digital storage built in. That it would be part of the selling point.
I may not be “on the mark” with my comments, but sorta ballpark I figure.
I want one of these storage devices badly. I packrat binary data.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
We need holographic storage.
Canadian ISP’s won’t innovate.
But there is Canada Post.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Couple that technology with some form of nanoassembler, and the entire current civilization is obsolete in a week:
I mean, come on — you feed the thing sand/dirt, and it reconfigures it into a pair of blue jeans that are assembled at the ATOMIC LEVEL?
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:10 pm
The only part of the opcom scenario that bothers me is the “send it back to it’s manufacturer” — the whole thing will just become a glorified Ipod that way…..no way.