Ars Technica: Holographic storage a reality before the end of the year
While we here at Ars may only have been talking about it for around 5×10-2 centuries, the idea was originally proposed at least as early as 1963 by Polaroid researcher Pieter J. Van Heerden. Lucent later did some work on the concept, then in 2001, the company spun off InPhase with the goal of developing a commercial application for the technology. In a nutshell, holographic storage increases density in an optical medium by storing the data in three dimensions instead of two.
How much greater data density? In the Hitachi Maxell device, a single disc about 1cm larger in diameter than a CD will buy you 300GB. By way of contrast, HD-DVD currently offers a maximum of 30GB on a 2-layer disc, and Blu-ray tops out at 50GB. Although upgrades are in the works that promise to increase the capacity of both of those formats, even the most pie-in-the-sky predictions fall short of what is planned for merely the first commercial generation of holographic storage. Future plans for that medium include boosting the capacity to 800GB in two years, and 1.6TB per disc by 2010.
Don’t get too excited, though. First generation systems tend to be expensive—on the order of US$15,000 for the reader/writer and between US$120-$180 for the discs. Also, the media is write-once, meaning that the system will be targeted at enterprise users who need a high-density backup solution. Even then, IT departments may need assurances that the photopolymer medium will remain stable over time.
Still, the real money lies in coming up with a product that can be sold in the mass market. With that in mind, InPhase and Hitachi Maxell have been discussing what form a consumer version of the technology might take. One possibility that has been mentioned is a disc around the size of a postage stamp, which would probably hold about 75-100GB. [Full article]