p2pnet - rss feed: Maxell holographic storage
p2p news / p2pnet: Distributed computing depends to a very considerable extent on being able to squeeze more and more data into less and less space.
It’s always been so and nothing has changed.
Maxell plans to ship its first holographic storage system late in 2006. It’ll be using technology from Bell Labs spin-off InPhase Technologies that’s said to be able to achieve 1.6TB per disk uncompressed capacity with 120MBps of bandwidth.
However, data storage expert Michael Thomas believes Maxell misses the mark, and then some.
"All my life I’ve believed customer’s data is sacred and have taken extreme care to avoid developing technology that might in the slightest way compromise these data," he told p2pnet..
"My own previous mistakes in understanding the material functionality leave me to believe that unfortunately, this isn’t the case with Maxell / InPhase technology."
InPhase says Turner Network Television had already aired content originating on InPhase holographic storage.
Was this first demonstration of Holo-storage for a TV network centre on the arts, or perhaps on world communications? No. Significantly, it was used to air an advertisement.
"On Friday, October 21, 2005 engineers from InPhase Technologies and Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. ingested a promotional advertisement into InPhase’s TapestryTM holographic disk as a data file," says InPhase proudly.
"The ad was recorded by InPhase’s holographic prototype drive onto the holographic disk, which was manufactured by Hitachi Maxell, an InPhase partner and investor. The file was then electronically migrated to a server and played back to air at the scheduled time. This promotional ad will remain active in the system and will be aired whenever called for by the program schedule of TNT."
This didn’t surprise Mike Thomas who’s been creating storage systems since 1974 when he was making five-meg disk packs - the biggest in the world, at the time.
The owner of Colossal Storage, he went on to conceptualise, design and patent his 3D Volume Atomic Holographic Removable Optical Storage NanoTechnology, among many other futuristic technologies.
He believes he’s already come up with the most practicable answer with his own Holo-storage system and here, tells p2pnet readers what he thinks about the Maxell announcement, saying developers in this field need to keep working on a long term, real solution for holographic storage and NOT settle for a product that gives it an incomplete commercialised solution.
"Colossal Storage will be the only drive in the world that will be able to read any phase change disk with the capability of overwriting or infinitely rewriting data to any phase change disk by changing the internal molecular structure of the polarized atom dipole geometry without heat and cooling," he says.
And, as he points out, in any event, it may be that new storage technologies will render the whole debate moot. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Phase change vs Holo-storage
By Michael Thomas - Colossal Storage
It’s interesting to note that Maxell’s / Optware technology offers no significant technology advances and really down plays the importance of holographic storage by offering a phase change product that does little to advance the technology.
Many questions arise as to whether the advances we expect from academia and industry have been clearly dealt with.
As a pioneer of data storage for 30 years, I find many unsolved problems. Maxell’s product won’t offer the lowest cost per gigabyte, have highest data bit density of any storage device, have lowest power requirement per gigabyte, have longest archive shelf life of any data storage media, have the widest environmental conditions and tolerances, will not be a technology that scales from nano to macro solutions, have the most reliable removable read / write media available, be a non-contact recording nanotechnology for increased reliability, have the highest bandwidth data transfer potential, be direct replacement for hard disk drives, and NOT be effected by high temperatures.
I find no answers to these questions by Maxell and others and I feel that their products are not defining the ultimate Holographic Storage solution needed by the world’s storage markets.
However, a technology that would be able to answer these questions is Colossal’s Atomic Holographic Optical Nanostorage.
It’s based on the World’s First Atomic or Molecular Switch method with a nanoparticle laser accelerator using electric fields and UV photons simultaneously to alter properties of ferroelectric molecule for data and light expression by changing the internal geometry of individual atoms in a three-dimensional optical crystal. I have invented and pioneered this area of science.
The ability to control an infinite rewritable nanoelectric molecular switch used in the diffraction of light is very attractive for the research and development of 3D volume holographic optical storage products.
Ferroelectric non-linear photonic crystal structures can provide media for infinite rewritability of data in a non-volatile holographic storage drive at low cost and extreme data bandwidth. No others materials to date have been defined that can do what non-linear perovskites can do.
The outstanding potentials of ferroelectric molecular materials when used in the right way will revolutionize 3D volume holographic optical storage technologies along with several challenges in design, optimization, fabrication, and characterisation providing for further extensive research and development activities in the field of holographic materials and data storage.
All known holographic storage attempts to date use read and green lasers to change volatile electrons clouds to store data and as a result have only been able to achieve write once read many devices, WORM. I feel this method can never overcome the Niels Bohr Atomic Theory of electron recapture and therefore, this type of Bragg/Compton Scattering recording technique is usually destructive readout and, like spatial spectral hole technology, has a short data storage shelf life.
Most all Phase Change media use ferroelectric material like Colossal Storage Corp. But the DVD/CD/MO/Blu-Ray/InPhase/Optware Phase Change companies didn’t know that the specific Ge2Sb2Te5 media they were using was ferroelectric but only knew if they heated it up and cooled it down something happened to the surface of the disc material.
I’m also afraid that over time, there could be serious issues with the WORM [write once read memory] media shelf life. For example, if the plastic polymer surrounding the ferroelectric material isn’t properly formulated to account for pinning of the ferroelectric molecule as a result of continual bombardment by the red and green lasers used by Maxell / InPhase / Optware media data could be lost.
All of today’s announced holographic storage technologies use a spatial light modulator (SLM) which writes one complete page of data at a time.
Data must be loaded to the SLM and are destructively written so any mistakes on the loaded SLM mean increased wasted error time.
Maxell and others can ONLY Write Pages of Data at a time only so many times to the ferroelectric data cells. (a page is like writing 1 page in a book - single characters are nearly impossible and inefficient).
This method is okay for WORM data storage, but it can never solve BIT FOR BIT Erase / Write / and Reading of random data to a disk in real time.
Colossal Storage nanotechnology will be able to Write Single Bits/ Bytes/Words/Characters to the page like the , . ( + @ ~ O 17 alphabet characters special characters an infinite number of times to the ferroelectric data cell. Today’s hard drives use the method Colossal wants to develop.
Colossal Storage will be the only optical drive in the world that will be able to read any phase change disk with the capability of overwriting or infinitely rewriting data to any phase change disk by changing the internal molecular structure of the polarized atom dipole geometry without heat and cooling.
Maxell / Bayer can never use shorter wavelength UV for example because a potential problem will be the polymer chain crosslink failure so a new coating would need to be developed. Here again they fail to advance the storage density roadmap due to this limitation.
It makes me suspicious when companies use materials they don’t understand to make products that don’t do the job they’re intended for.
Also read-
fall short - Theory to Explain Phase-Shift Recording Mechanism, NE Asia, January, 2005, Issue
aired content - TURNER NETWORK TELEVISION, INPHASE TECHNOLOGIES, AND HITACHI MAXELL MAKE HISTORY ON FIRST PLAY-OUT-TO-AIR FROM HOLOGRAPHIC SYSTEM, November 14, 2005
futuristic technologies - Every file you ever owned on 1 disc, February 25, 2004
November 27th, 2005 at 12:13 am
I hope they dont ruin a cool technology like this with DRM.
November 27th, 2005 at 3:54 am
Sounds quite complicated. I imagine any technological leap like this is always going to have teething problems.
Realistically, i don’t think the technology will be useable, for a few years atleast. 2006 seems a little early.
November 27th, 2005 at 7:41 am
Colossal Storage say they will not be available till 2009. Maxell 2006. Hard Drives have been struggling with capacity increases, and even with perpendicular we still don’t see big gains.
They all sound good and the sooner any of these hit the shops the better.
If Maxell deliver in 2006, will I wait for a possible Colossal in 2009?
Obviously, I’d buy the Maxell. It’ fantastic news!
HD-DVD or Blue-Ray? If they swing round and go together and have in here by Christmas 2005, they may still sell a couple. Otherwise I’ll wait for Maxell in 2006.
November 27th, 2005 at 8:51 am
For some time, computer advances have been incremental. They are no longer coming in leaps and bounds. They are waiting on solving the next generation tech advances and until they do, this will continue to be a snails pace of creeping forward. Since all the easier advances have already been done, it will take the next break through to put things on track for large advances.
We are approaching the limits of material and space in microworld due to various constraints such as heat dissapation. Until nano becomes reality and not the tinker toy realm to demonstrate building basics, we are stuck with barely moving forward. Now the concentration is in dual processing and not so much increasing chip speed.
Storage increasing makes the computer good for long spaces by what can be held but not processing power to run through the material stored. Still any increases are welcome with open arms by the general computing world as it becomes reasonably priced to reach the market.
November 27th, 2005 at 11:56 am
The main constraints on modern computers is the need to use electrical impulses to convey binary patterns. Quantum/photon based technology presents us with the solution to this.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Bluray is the new standard for the dvd movies, hd dvd player has lost.
Microsoft will change to Blu-ray.