HoloGraphic Storage

[Cogman]

I have to ask, What is really holding the advancement of new storage? I have heard the IBM is developing a Holographic Cube for a Hard drive (from a older brother) that is supposed to be much faster, quieter, and have a much higher storage capacity then that of out flat hardrives. So what is the hold up? Is this really happening?

 

[Shalmanese]

mainly revenue and demand.

The main HD makers have pushed margins for IDE HD's razor thin and there is simply no $$$ to spend of big R&D projects.

Secondly, were suffering from a glut of HD space and theres no demand for bigger HD's. for the average person, 10GB is simply never ever going to be filled up so the upgrade market has shrunk. The IT collapse means that new computer sales are down and not many people are straying from the standard 40Gb drives.

Its only the top 5% of the market who do excessive downloading or video production that are demanding bigger and bigger drives.

 

[Shalmanese]

Oh, and plus the advent of cheap CD-RW and now DVD-R means that there is a cheaper option that upgrading Hard Drives.

 

[everman]

I read about this tech from IBM a long time ago and haven't heard about it since. It would theoretically allow for massive amounts of storage but I'm not sure about speed issues. Most people don't really need so much space though.

 

[jurzdevil]

it seems like a super high tech toy that only a few people in the world will ever get to play with.

 

[Amorphus]

until we start seeing true 3d-games... immersive, etc.

games are getting bigger and bigger, too.

 

[Train]

last i read they say it will hit the market in 2005. Gonna be a few terrabytes of data in a little crystal cube that costs pennies. The lasers that access it are only slightly more complex than the lasers we have in our CD/dvd drives now. The real benifit is the speed, WAY faster than a disk. These will be closer to the speed of RAM, applications will load in the blink of an eye.

 

[Epimetreus]

It won't be pennies at first. Well, it will be, but probably several hundreds of thousands of them(IE, ~$4000). That's how it always is; the first few who buy something pay huge amounts so the company gets some return on its R&D.
I am reading up on the latest developments; they've solved a great deal of issues surrounding the technology; still can't do rewriteable media yet but are working on it, ROMs are looking good to go though.
Expected to hit the market around 2004, storage density appears to be in the neighborhood of 100 Gbit(around 13 gigs) per square inch. That's first generation achievable specs; using that as a base, a 5.25 disc would hold around 200 gigs of data.
The company I got the data from is called InPhase, their homepage is www.inphase-technologies.com

 

[FishTankX]

The only problem with such a thing is that there wont' be any way to mass produce them, ala CD/DVD stampers.

 

[MegaCharger]

I welcome any cheap and big storage media. I'm getting sick of losing my DVD/CD. You know almost every computer junkie is not exactly the clean type of person, we always lose stuff here and there With those new HDs I can devote a drawer or 2 to exclusive store them.

 

[zephyrprime]

People have been trying to make holographic storage for like 20 years and they could never get it to work right.

 

[trak0rr0kart]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
People have been trying to make holographic storage for like 20 years and they could never get it to work right.

But they will Just like the advent of the micochip.

 

[dullard]

It is very easy to burn holes in a cube in just the right places to store data - take 3 lasers one on each axis that when converged they produce enough heat to alter the solid. But there are two problems which haven't been solved yet.
1) How do you read the data? You have a solid block with holes in it. How do you know where the holes are? You could shine a laser though and by measuring how much was absorbed you'd know how many holes there are in that direction - but that still doesn't tell you where the holes are.
2) How do you erase/rewrite data? There isn't any method of filling the holes back in... Although for many uses this isn't a problem (CDRs for example), it still would pose a major problem for use in a hard drive.

 

[Train]

dullard, your idea of how it works is way off, they dont make holes in the crystal. and they only use 2 lasers, not 3.

One laser is a fine point like the ones that read a CD, the other is a spread into a plane. where the point laser crosses the plane is where the read/write occurs. i think its basically a charge on the crystal molecules(s) in that tiny section that cause the light to be changed somewhat so you know if its a 0 or a 1, as for writting, im not sure how they get the charge to change to positive or negative, i just know it works.

 

[Quackmaster]

Originally posted by: MegaCharger
I welcome any cheap and big storage media. I'm getting sick of losing my DVD/CD. You know almost every computer junkie is not exactly the clean type of person, we always lose stuff here and there With those new HDs I can devote a drawer or 2 to exclusive store them.

I've been trying to dig back up the link (to no avail), but overclockers.com, simmtester.com and eetimes.com have all run articles this year detailing the various "next gen" RAM technologies. holographic, organic, carbon-based RAMs are some of the different types I've seen. The bigger question is not what type or when it's going to get here, that's inevitable; the question is "who" gets to market with the best yields/comptability/merging with existing platfroms. Overclockers was reporting about one of the currently researched technologies (carbon based) thinking they can make it to market next year (not that we'd see the RAM then. More likely a year or two later, if not 3 or 4..)

Till then tho...what about this? Now that looks like fun!