The coming Holographic revolution.... (thread for IT nerds)

NeoNSX

NeoNSX

Legendary Member
Joined
2 October 2001
Messages
8,546
Location
Melb. AUSTRALIA
COMPUTER NERDS REJOICE!!! :D HOLOGRAPH DISC's & HDD's ARE ON THEIR WAY! :D

In 1996 I read an R&D article about the potential of using holographs to store data. The technology promised to break all the barriers of magnetic mediums - HDD's the size of 3cm cubed, capacities measured in TB's, and transfer rates in hundreds of MB/sec. The article also said we should be seeing holographic technology within ~10yrs.

Well... ten years is almost here and next year Maxell is releasing Holographic media. With storage capacities achieving <B>1.6 TeraBytes per disk</B> and data rates as high as 120 MBPs, holographic technology is a true breakthrough in optical media.

<B> http://www.dvhardware.net/article8267.html </B>


This is actually quite a significant step in storage technology. So while "normal" people (like myself :) ) don't particularly care, nerds will see the huge benefits. Finally you may be able to backup your entire genetic dna sequence on one HDD. :D The possibilities are limitless.
 
Finally! I remember reading about this in the 90's too and being excited at the prospect. It seems that optical media just hasn't kept up with the latest bandwidth and storage requirements. Too bad it's a few years too late. For the moment, we're stuck with 15 and 25GB HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs and insanely complex video compression (VC-1/H.264), just to fit on these measly discs.

Since I work in the industry and am actually writing code to accelerate H.264 (which is obscenely more complicated than MPEG-2, and requires immense computational power), I'm really looking forward to the day when the next-gen after these upcoming High Definition DVD's come out and don't require such complicated video compression in order to fit on the media! Let me tell you, this whole HD-DVD thing is a big mess on a lot of different levels, and not just because there are two competing formats. The decompression complexity, the digital rights management issues, physical media issues, etc. Ugh, I'm getting a headache just thinking about it!
 
I'm glad some other people are interested in this technology enough to post about it. ;) I totally agree with you Arshad - the coming HD-DVD/Blu-Ray standards are stupidly complex. Perhaps the MPAA think that will deter piracy somehow. :rolleyes:

I did a quick calculation.... 1.6TB is enough to store over 300,000 MP3 files roughly 5MBytes each. Perhaps now iPod owners will get excited. :D
 
Back
Top