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Holographic storage's corpse twitches

Failed holographic storage start-up InPhase is selling off its patents as Eugen Pavel's Storex has developed 2nm optical lithography which could lead to a 100 exabyte optical disk. At one end of the holographic storage spectrum we see a crumbling corpse, while at the other holographic gee-whizzery is talking about a disk with …

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Martin Huizing
WTF?

When I first heard about holographic storage many years ago...

...people said it was a sure thing and a natural progression over other storage methods and media. You had artists drawing cubes with fancy lasers shooting at it and it would make quantum computing possible. And this was 12 years ago? Last article I read about was the comeback of storage tapes. What the Hell is going on here? Why haven't major names like Seagate, Panasonic or even Big Blue itself not jumped on this? Still patents? Wouldn't they be over InPhase like vultures if there really was something to see here? And still we talk about disks and tapes?

Is it too much to ask to have a tiny cube-like object able to retain my entire 3D porn collection?

I mean, really that much to ask after 12 years?

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
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And what about my jetpack, hoverboard and flying car?

Oh, and virtual reality. What happened to that?

It'sa Mea... Mario
Meh
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@Why haven't major names... ...not jumped on this?

Because what would they sell you after you have brought a disk capable of storing all the data you are ever likely to aquirer in one lifetime? (apart from another one to back it up..)

The media mafia are also likely to be against it because one day it could lead to 'pirates' being able to optain a copy of every film or song ever digitised and fit it all on to a couple of optical disks.

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
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I blame the MAFIAA

No doubt the roadblock is figuring how best to cripple it with some obnoxious content protection system. They certainly can't let a new recording medium go to market without one built in.

Oninoshiko
Boffin
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We have VR

I've used it. It's just not vary useful for anything.

Peroxide-fueled jet packs can be made relatively simply. They just have no fail-safes, are hard to control, have low flight time, and again not vary useful.

I do want my flying car though and hoverboard though!

Chris Mellor 1

Working InPhase holographic storage

Bart Stuck, Signal Lake's MD, sent me this mail"

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

InPhase Demos of Working Disks and Storage Media

Demo 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqcTZYCSwnM

Demo 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYq-J6K4zpE

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It got me thinking and my thinking is that holographic disks in the gigabyte capacity class are no good anymore. NAND flash will take over because it's cheaper (no drive is needed) and the data transfer rate much faster. Unless holo disks have 100X more capacity than NAND and acceptable data transfer rates I can't see them taking off in large numbers even if they do last 50 years. Tell me I'm wrong?

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
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but crucially,

how long to fill it up completely during one writint session? Surely long enough for the format to become obsolete by the time your grandgrandgrandgrandgrandchildren see the following message:

"Drive burn error! Insert a blank media and try again"

despairing citizen
Big Brother

Practical Use

Ok, great science, but what are we going to use the storage space for? by my recokening, this is the equivelent of 50m 2TB HDD's of storage.

So ignoring that crack that it will be needed for windows 9 install disk space.....

or HMG's latest track everybody everywhere database

Are there any practical applications out there?

What are the seek times to find the 1mb document in the 100 exabyte haystacks?

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
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"what are we going to use the storage space for?"

same thing we use TBs of storage for now - PR0N

Chris Mellor 1

The nails smacked formly on their heads

It's the total disk write time and file/object seek time that seem to me too to be crucial attributes of holographic storage. Some kind of file system for the latter and a fast-as-possible drive for the latter. But developing the drive - that's what tormented InPhase to distraction and then imploding destruction.

FunkyEric
Black Helicopters

If you invent it, they will fill it up

Who would have thought just a few years ago that you would have errrr movies that took up more than 10 Gigabytes (errr theoreticaly speaking of course). Why on earth would anyone ever need that much storage? lol, although I have to admit 100EB is a bit of a jump isn't it :-)

Michael Dunn
Coat
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@FunkyEric

You remind me of _someone_ in computing asking who could possibly want more that 640K memory! Or Tom Watson Jr with his "There is a world market for 11 computers."

I've a copy of Prediction in the pocket.

Steven Roper
Meh

Yeah, yeah

100 EB? Yeah, right. I'll believe it when I see them on the shelves at IT Warehouse and not before.

Dazzza

data centre

need i say more? ok, users will have limited use for this but the data centres of the world would love it, the power saving along would be huge!

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