Holographic Storage Crams in 0.5TB Per Square Inch 288
An anonymous reader writes "VNUNet is reporting that a company called InPhase Technologies claims they have successfully recorded 515GB of data per square inch to capture the record for highest data density. From the article: 'InPhase promised to begin shipping the first holographic drive and media later this year. The first generation drive has a capacity of 300GB on a single disk with a 20Mbps transfer rate. The first product will be followed by a family ranging from 800GB to 1.6TB capacity.'"
BUT (Score:4, Funny)
You're not alone... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:BUT (Score:3, Insightful)
The +1 interesting mod... funny.
The funny thing is, it's the porn industry that is the first to ship things in new formats. While *I* wouldn't mod the above comment as interesting, it stands to reason that good quality porn was the reason many bought into 16mm, super8, beta/vhs, and DVD.
So yes, a mod likely has a porn collection that spans so many DVDs they would very much enjoy a new space saving format that is equal or better in quality... for their HDTV cum shots, and 60 inch p
Re:BUT (Score:2)
Storage takes the lead (Score:5, Insightful)
The obligatory quote (Score:3, Interesting)
~ Andrew Tanenbaum
Not at 20Mbps (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not at 20Mbps (Score:5, Informative)
99 writers on the wall.... (Score:2)
Who advertises transfer rates in bytes/sec??? After all, it would be much more impressive to state their drive transfers 200 megabits/sec... They could even ambigiously just write "mb' to further stun readers...
And I wonder if "mega" here means 2^20 or 10^6. The latter is an often-used cheap way of increasing statistics by 5%....
by convention? shit.., (Score:3, Funny)
I foresee web 3.0... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I foresee web 3.0... (Score:2)
Data Rate? (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM can do it faster (Score:4, Interesting)
For high output data rate, one must read holograms with many pixels per page in a reasonably short time. To read a megapixel hologram in about 1 ms with reasonable laser power and to have enough signal at the detector for low error rate, a diffraction efficiency around eta = 3 × 105 is required. To write such a hologram in 1 ms, to achieve input and output data rates of 1 Gb/s, the sensitivity for this example must be at least S'eta2 = 20 cm2/J.
Since this hologram was retrieved using a readout pulse of 1 ms, this experiment implements the optical signal (but not the subsequent fast electronic readout) of a system with a readout rate of 1 Gb/s.
Re:Data Rate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Data Rate? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Data Rate? (Score:2)
Or perhaps 33 hrs (Score:2)
Media Format Battle (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Media Format Battle (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Media Format Battle (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a time when DVD's were useful for HD backups. I think with the capacity of the HD formats, they are too little, too late.
Star Trek comes to life..... (Score:4, Funny)
I think it's so sad that I remember that episode and even the name of a minor character.
Re:Star Trek comes to life..... (Score:2)
Re:Star Trek comes to life..... (Score:3, Funny)
So do Paulina, Melvina and Lunt.
no details (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:no details (Score:3, Insightful)
For these purposes DVDs are less and less practical (reliability, access speed, finding the DVD the data was written to). Tape back ups are less practical and for personal use are a more expensive solution (the hardware cost anyways). I have a pile of DVDs and most are just duplicates of the same data for redundancy.
Fi
Re:no details (Score:2)
This is quite affordable for the problem at hand. [cybernetics.com] but then again, it is not affordable by everyone's standards.
Re:no details (Score:2)
Clicky clicky (Score:2)
Click on the link to InPhase Technologies, click on their press releases... hey, there it is! Looks to me like they're trying to use CD/DVD-like discs to provide backwards compatibility. As for longevity of the medium, their web site seems to indicate they're still perfecting that part of the technology.
http://www.inphase-technologies.com/news/Tapestry_ 4000.html [inphase-technologies.com]
"Holographic storage is a revolutionary departure from all existing recording methods becaus
Re:no details (Score:3, Informative)
Coupled with this [nxtbook.com] article, which says that it's "10 times faster than a normal DVD burner (whatever that means)," and holds about 300GB (278 GBytes formatted) it's clear that they're aiming for removable media.
Apparently each 300GB disk is about the size of a DVD (but thicker due to it having it's own little shell, like a floppy/zip/mini disk). Just like al
Re:no details (Score:2)
Actually, being that it's hologrammatic data, if one bit fails, will they all fail?
Re:no details (Score:3, Informative)
If you can describe the error model of the medium, that is what types of errors are likely to occur (random dropouts, scratches which cause burst errors), you can then lay o
Re:no details (Score:2)
Re:no details (Score:2)
Raw capacity doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
What I want to know is, how does this technology stack up against hard drives or other existing technologies on issues like
- Data read speed
- Data write speed
- Power consumption
- Heat and/or noise
- Size and complexity of read/write mechanism
- Resistance to physical damage
- Rate of data decay
Transfer speed (Score:2)
From what little I know [slashdot.org] about holographic storage, write speeds are a lot slower than read speeds. Though if it could actually read at 160 MB/s like this article [computerworld.com] claims, why didn't they say that?
Re:Transfer speed (Score:3, Informative)
The older stuff that got something like 200G/in^2 had a much faster transfer rate, but lower density.
It's all due to the electronic end, really. The laser picks up the data at 1G/s, but the electronics take much longer to send it out to whatever bus reads it.
Re:Raw capacity doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
But appart from that, these are sensible questions, and the TFA doesn't say anything to answer them. There's a good /. comment [slashdot.org] further down with better information.
Re:Raw capacity doesn't matter (Score:2, Insightful)
All the people with digitized photo collections, DV cam home videos, downloaded stuff, ripped music, etc. All of these people should be backing up and archiving but most of them either don't know or don't care.
Most people don't want to be their own IT department with managed backups and retention policies and offsite rotated storage. On the other hand, if you ask them how much value they have in photos or music, ma
Re:Raw capacity doesn't matter (Score:2)
Well, I don't NEED terabytes of storage, but I can think of a lot of things I'd LIKE to do with it if I had it. And for most of the applications I have in mind, high throughput isn't a major issue, and if this turns out to be cheaper than hard drives and offers the advantage of removable media, I'm all over it.
I don't need a computer in the first place. But I have spent many thousands of dollars over the years because I w
Re:Raw capacity doesn't matter (Score:2)
Who cares about the people who 'need' it? I more interested in the people who would use it if it were cheap enough. That's where the fun stuff in computing occurs.
Acutually, this would make a good backup for consumer video, which is already problematic in terms of cost/robustness.
My, what a small disk you have (Score:5, Funny)
GigaBITs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:GigaBITs (Score:2)
"The new drives are capable of 230GB per inch squared, compact enough to build a 20GB mini iPod or a terabyte 3.5 inch drive."
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2127087/hitachi- breaks-hard-drive-record [vnunet.com]
"GB" is the misprint (Score:2)
230 GB/in2 would be enough to make an 8 TB 3.5" drive. As it is, they're only hoping for a mere 8 Tb drive.
Re:My, what a small disk you have (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My, what a small disk you have (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My, what a small disk you have (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My, what a small disk you have (Score:2)
So apparently, that 515GB is a current maximum, and the 300GB disc won't be using that maximum density.
GB or Gb? MBps or Mbps? (Score:3, Insightful)
> 20Mbps transfer rate
which equals about 2.5 MBps (megabytes per second). It would take about 8 days to read a whole 1.6 GB disk
And the density sounds like half a terabit, not terabyte:
> after successfully recording 515Gb of data per square inch.
> In April 2005 we demonstrated 200 Gb/in data density
~XT
Re:GB or Gb? MBps or Mbps? (Score:2)
Re:GB or Gb? MBps or Mbps? (Score:4, Interesting)
1.6 GB * 8 * 1024 = 131107.2 Mb - megabits in 1.6 gigabytes
131107.2 Mb / 20 Mbps = 655.36 s - seconds to read at 20 megabit per second
655.36 s / 60 s = 10.92 min - convert to minutes
At 20Mbps, it would take you 4.855 days to read a terabyte, which is pitiful for local storage. (1.6TB would be 7.77 days, or the almost 8 days in the parent post.) Even at 20MBps, that is still 14.56 hours for 1 TB, which is far too slow.
This might work as a backup medium for archiving, as long as it was suposed to be 20 megabyte/s instead of megabit. Many tape systems are right around the 20MBps mark, however there are solutions out there that archive over 100MBps.
Square or Cubic? (Score:2, Insightful)
Erm... doesn't Holographic imply three dimensions? Wouldn't it be cubic inch?
Re:Square or Cubic? (Score:2)
It's in "thre dimensions" but it is on the surface of a platter, just like the hard drives of today. We aren't talking a "cube" of storage.
Re:Square or Cubic? (Score:2)
I think it comes out to something like 500Gb per cubic centimeter. But I'm not sure.
Thank goodness... (Score:3, Interesting)
If only there was an easy way to get more info... (Score:2)
Here's a brilliant idea: Maybe somewhere in the summary, Slashdot could include an easy way to get more information about the story... say, with a hyperlink [vnunet.com] to a webpage. Then people would have an easy way to find answers to questions they may have that aren't covered by the one paragraph summary. For instance, people could then read the news article that mentions that "In this demonstration there were over 1.3 mill
I think I speak for all of us... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think I speak for all of us... (Score:3, Insightful)
Square inches? (Score:2, Interesting)
And why is 1.6TB the largest they're offering? 3 square inches of recording surface? A 5.25" drive gives what, about 70-80 square inches of recording surface? Give me a 40TB drive for the price of a 500GB hard drive. That'll be worth something to me, otherwise I'll just stick with standard hard drives. They're cheap and fast.
Re:Square inches? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Square inches? (Score:2)
Re:Square inches? (Score:2)
Re:Square inches? (Score:2)
Only if you have a way to focus your laser at an arbitrary depth. However, if a standard-size disc makes it possible to store thousands of gigabytes of data on a flat disc, then the question of three-dimensional storage is nearly moot. The cost of making a storage drive that can focus a laser in a three-dimensional medium is probably much higher than the c
Re:Square inches? (Score:2, Funny)
As long as you let me stack my 1 square inch black and white tiles high enough...
*fetches ladder*
anyone remember C3D? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in 2000 or 2001 slashdot had a story about a company called C3D (or CDDD which was their stock ticker, website was http://www.c-3d.net/ [c-3d.net]). This company promised 1TB and higher density discs with insane transfer speeds because it was storage...in 3D. They showed a few discs (CD sized) and a reader which were supposedly a prototype of some sort at trade shows. All of this ran their stock up quite a bit. They were promised to replace DVD's in a few years, and eventually hard drives. There was also this credit card device (10gigs) which was rewritable (?), which was to replace traditional hard drives in notebooks.
Deadline after deadline passed, the stock slowly declined ($60 a share was the norm in 2000) due to the market conditions in 2001, eventually causing it to be delisted from the NASDAQ (has a value of $0.01 a share). Rumor has it that the company was founded/owned/something by a former Israeli/Soviet general (the company wasn't located in the US), and that there never was a product (all demos were faked).
How do I know this? I was the fool who bought the stock when it was $20 a share, watched it rise up to $66, and fall to nothing. I believed before and it cost me a decent amount of money.
Holographic media has been a scam before and it'll be one until there is a box with a price tag in a store. Even then, I would be cautious about buying it.
Re:anyone remember C3D? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But it moooves (Score:2)
Maybe you should buy some of these things [mikhailtech.com]. They aren't very expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:But it moooves (Score:2)
This is 1st generation (Score:4, Insightful)
First, this is one "plate" compared with 5 plates of the 500 gig hard drives.
Second, this is a first generation product. The first CD-Rom was incredibly slow. The first DVD-Rom was incredibly slow. The first 3.5" hard drive was incredibly slow. See a pattern? This is probably going to be marketed toward those industries that use DAT tapes. As they incur most of the initial costs, the technology will improve, densities will increase and costs will fall. Is there anyone paying 400$ for a 2X CD-recorder nowadays?
Plus, these aren't being sold to consumers until 2008 which is a good decision because it allows the technology to mature.
Will these replace hard drives? In my opinion, not until 2011, sometime around there. That's when perpendicular hard drives (+ onboard flash) will reach maximum density compared with cost and holographic drives will dip under the HD price point. Considering that the industry is moving toward 2.5" HD drives as a replacement for 3.5" HD drives, holographic storage (let's start a new acronym: HS) will offer even more storage on a technology that should be hitting full stride at that point.
But this depends on HS random access times and how the research is heading toward flash memory. Flash Storage might be a competitor to HS around then.
Another GB/Gb error (Score:3, Insightful)
Extremely slow transfer rate (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Extremely slow transfer rate (Score:2)
It might take you 5 minutes to burn a 700MB CD, but how long does it take to burn 500 or so, and how much would that cost you? How would the storage of 500 CDs affect you? How long and how much would it cost for 1x CDs and drives back 8 years or so ago?
Your comparison to a 700MB CD is totally pointless.
Re:Extremely slow transfer rate (Score:3, Informative)
2) 4.7 gig / 25 minutes = 3 MB/sec
3) 700 meg / 5 minutes = 2 MB/sec
So, it's about 7 - 10 times faster than writing to optical media. What's your point?
Even assuming it 20 Megabit, which it's not, it'd still be comperable to CD/DVD.
file finding (Score:2, Interesting)
I imagine the "find" option in Windows will have no problem nor will Spotlight. And those wonderful desktop search tools will just FLY indexing a terabyte. No sweat.
That or I'll lose 6 out of 8 hours either organizing or just searching for 2k in 2,000 gigs / 2,000,000 mbs / 2,000,000,000 kbs.
Can't wait. Or we can all wait for that wonderful file system that's yet to come.
- on that note a serious question -
WTF happened to "t
It's that time again? (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Works great in my flying car! (Score:5, Funny)
I'll be installing one of these in the dashboard of my flying car later this year when they both come out.
By the way, my car runs on cold fusion.
And the in-dash computer plays Duke Nukem Forever.
20Mbps transfer speed? (Score:2)
Some day (Score:2, Funny)
Square inch? SQUARE inch! (Score:3, Funny)
Where's my data cube?
Transfer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not that competitive. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not that competitive. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not that competitive. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not that competitive. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not that competitive. (Score:5, Informative)
Also remember that this is the first product to use this technology. In a few years we will look back on this and think about how amazingly slow it is, and how slow it is.
My Question Is... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, how well do their disks stand up against bit-rot?
My Question Is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My Question Is... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:My Question Is... (Score:4, Funny)
So what?
And also you are a huge dork.
You have an account on slashdot. STFU.
Re:My Question Is... (Score:2)
Re:My Question Is... (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realise that the majority of the world's population (over 70%) has access to electricity, even in the third world, and the remaining percentage that doesn't is shrinking fairly quickly (e.g. a few decades) due to rapid growth?
Re:Hopefully this can be made generally available. (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like BS! (Score:2, Insightful)
We were supposed to have 100GB CD's 5 years ago.
Problem is that DRM happened....
Wasnt that Steve Ballmer that did that? (Score:2)
Re:this will be very expensive (Score:2)
Re:I'm still trying to figure out... (Score:2)
I find it more interesting, though, to note that the technology can also be used for high-volume power storage. Of course, if you say so in any verifiable manner, you'll be disappeared.
Poof.
-FL