Holographic Storage

[Moolkye 0]

I once heard about a storage device that would store information 3 dimensionally. Meaning that instead of storing it end to end, it would be able to stack end to end and on top of one another.I think that it was a crystal type of device, no moving parts!Has anyone else ever heard about this?

[kawasu 0]

there is already a thread on this in Xisto. they're stll developing it. shouldn't be finalised any time soon though. i heard they got their storage capacity to up 300GB per disk and plan on making them much much bigger. should be good when it becomes mass produced.

Edited August 8, 2006 by kawasu (see edit history)

[uiop 0]

Intresting. Could somebody post the link to the other thread about this?I feel compelled to pointout that DVDs also store data "three dimensionally".

[Florisjuh 0]

Well "holograhpic" zould mean this has something to do with virtual images right, data can be send by viber optical cabels which would mean this could be possible, but sounds to be very hard to implent..

[AlternativeNick 0]

that would be insane... its like in all the movies where you see someone drop a diamond or a crystal into a computer, and it just reads the data off of it... i couldnt imagine that lol

[Moolkye 0]

Well it would be more like those cool 3d holograms that use to be on National Geographic. If you look at it one way you only se eit in 2d but tilt the image slightly and you see what's behind that object, hence the 3d. So data would be stored like that. I mean crystals themselves have thousands of areas of surface within the body of the crystal. Each surface being a place to store data dimensionally. Kind of insane, but super cool.

[lemonwonder 0]

Sounds cvery expensive, I would rather stick with things like blu-ray discs, or use the same teqnique as UMD's but make the discs normal size, and use the whole disc without a hole, (if thyey can get a new way to spin the disc) coz the umds are like.. 1.7gbs and at the size of a normal disc, for home use they wood be great!I like to stick with the old fasioned... but not too old fasioned.

[Radioactive 0]

I did a presentation at school some months ago about Holographic-Versatile-Discs (HDV). According to the HDV wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc), HDV's have a capacity of 3.9 Terabytes (3900 Gb) and even much much more, counting with the double layer/side versions of HVD's. I can't confirm the veracity of this but there are other official sources from where you can get more precise information. HowStuffWorks also has information on HDV here.

 

By the way, while I was searching about the subject I also found an article named "Holographic Memory" (here) that could store terabytes of information

 

 

EDIT: Corrected some words ('HDV' to 'HVD', for Holographic Versatile Disc) Thanks Cerebral Stasis

Edited August 12, 2006 by Radioactive (see edit history)

[Moolkye 0]

Wow, That was the picture I was trying to find. Thanks so much for posting that Radioactive. Much appreciated.

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

Wait... Wouldn't a Holographic Versatile Disk be (HVD) instead of (HDV)?In any case, it looks amazing! Thanks for sharing the information. Of course we will eventually reach a storage limit, but to see the current boundaries constantly being pushed is an exciting process.

[steven1022 0]

Heh, thats what I was thinking, and if it came out on the market and wasnt entirely too expensive I think I would jump off the old fashioned band wagon for some better space heh.

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

Well, currently the players cost some 12,000 USD and the disks 1,000 USD each, if I'm not mistaken (it may be more for the player), but prices will eventually go down, even though it may take a few decades.

[Radioactive 0]

(Typo corrected)

 

Wait, I don't think that we are aware of the situation yet. We're talking about Terabytes of capacity! If 4GB of RAM is more than enough for you (and the ammount currently limited by most motherboards) then imagine what a simple terabyte (1000GB!) would do. Not to talk about the game development industry! Games will have all the available resources to freely run and improve.

 

Of course that at the start, the main objective for this kind of memory will be for enterprise and professional purposes, I suppose.

 

But that's only the memory part! Consumer-level developments are already on the talk, and the first Holographic thing we will get our hands on in first place might be the Holographic Versatile Disks. HVD's, along with it's subsequent home entertainment and industry developments, will result in tremendous audio and video quality for home users and entertainment firms. Just think: one price does never come alone ; you'll probably need some high power equipment to support such high quality, but can't be quite sure about this part since I'm not into electronics. Just my oppinion.

 

To finalize, we sill need to think about the other storage that can possibly adapt this technology as well, such as Hard-Drives. HDD's are currently the 'Highest capacity storage' for our PC's, and if we get our hands on such a thing as (say..) 'Holographic-Drives', we can expect much much more than HVD's will offer..

 

And let's not forget about all the other devices that have memory too, like cellphones, etc. I think that's enough to think of..

[lemonwonder 0]

Thats alot of space lol, and if they are cheap (aka-100-300 dollars) which i doubt, but anyways think of all the hosting companys wood be able to offer, if someone cod say how much peeps Xisto has, if it is 3900 we could all have a gig each.... for a tiny lil disc, and if Xisto and other hosting companys had filled up a whole room with a server running on these discs, that wood be lotza space! They wood needa be ok to be in use for a long time, and computer running em wood needs lotza ram, maybe use 1 disc for ram, and but wow! thats alot of space, it wood take foreva to fill up one of those discs... u prolly need every mmocc in the world to fill it up... maybe more lol.But how many users does Xisto have?

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

Well, it would take awhile before they could be read-write, if ever, so they wouln't be used as hard drives for awhile.And to that RAM comment, 64-bit processors allow for a few TB of ram, if I'm not mistaken. Problem is, we don't have RAM chips that big.