DailyTech – Hitachi-Maxell to Ship Holographic Storage this Year — I’ll believe this when I see it. I will be stunned if a genuine product actually ships this year. That’s not to say this technology is impossible. It’s to say it’s coming up too fast to be real. Then again this report cited here in 2002 indicates that we should have seen something back when. Curiously we see the same reporter here making noise about this latest shot in the dark. Seems odd, no?
And, hey, I’m hoping it works. WE need some sort of back-up device to hold the terabyte desktop HD data.
Maxell along with InPhase Technologies will be bringing holographic storage technology to the market at the end of this year. Maxell’s director of technical marketing Rich D’Ambrise said that 300GB holographic discs will be available in November or December of this year. Maxell also indicated that sometime in 2008, the company will be introducing second generation disc that store up to 800GB of data. By 2010, Maxell is hoping to introduce 1.6TB holographic discs.
I thought 3M was working on this with space experiments back 15? years ago..And made one.
JCD had a column quite some time ago where he speculated that with Blue lasers finally getting ready for prime time we would now have RGB holographics. I want my holodeck! On the other hand would I ever leave the house?
I believe it.
I think that the technology itself has been ready for quite a while, but that the packaging was an issue. Who wants a drive the size of a desktop computer? But they have probably been able to shrink it to a reasonable size, and the commercial viability is now present.
The bigger question is who needs it?
Removable media is inherently fragile. It gets dropped, scratched, chipped, afffected by heat and sunlight, etc. The market will probably be pretty small for quite a few years for removable disks of this capacity, exept for specialized applications such as backup. But for everyday use the DVD type media still has a long life in front of it.
I was in an Optical Engineering program at college in 1986-87 and we were approached by a business proposal to began work on three dimensional data using holographic techniques. It was possible back then. I’m surprised to see it took this long to develop.
I hope they brand it something cool, like “holodiscs”. I’d be annoyed asking the guy at the local CDR-King for a box of “HHDDVDs”.
Cool, i’ll be watching about this.
Depending on how fast the enterprise market adopts it, it’s still several years out from the consumer market. The HD spindles will have a good lead by then.
Whatever format it winds up in it’ll be cool. Talk about “Life Backup”. Every movie, every TV series you like but couldn’t stand the commercials, everything you’ve written, recorded or even been mentioned in. Every data base you’ve ever accessed, every news/editorial article you’ve ever read. Dossiers on your children, family, business associates and even chicks from high school that wouldn’t give you the time of day. Maintenance manuals on computers, cars, motorcycles or that 747 you might want to buy one of these days. The possibilities are literally endless.
And on my holodeck; I’m thinking grass hut, warm tropical breeze, young lady wearing naught but a three frond grass skirt serving me delightful little drinks with tiny umbrellas on top. Why, I wonder, would anyone ever want to leave that house?
Take another hit from the big bong, boys & girls and observe the bullsh*t machine firing at full blast.
Bob is probably right..everyone else is idealistic. I suspect there is something basically wrong with the technology or there is a missing piece to the manufacturing puzzle. The fact is this has taken a long time and there has to be a reason. Oh, hey. How’s this for a reason: it simply does not work.