Super Storage

We now have 750GB to play with on the desktop, and multi-terrabyte drives aren't too far off. How are we supposed to archive all that data? We could use 80-plus dual-layer DVDs, or try 30-plus blue laser DVDs.

InPhase Technologies and Maxell have another answer: holographic storage technology.

The first holographic discs will hold 300GB each--that's 7 hours of HD video at 100Mbps. Drives will offer a 160Mbps transfer rate. By 2010, Maxell estimates, holographic tech should be up to 1.6TB at 960Mbps.

Although the bare discs look a lot like DVDs, there are a number of differences in the technology. According to Maxell, holographic technology uses "volumetric" recording, in three dimensions; DVD records serially on one plane. Holographic tech also records over a million bits at one time compared with one data bit at a time for DVD. Holographic tech can also record different data on the same location on the disc by changing the angle on the reference beam, which is called multiplexing. Holographic tech uses two lasers to work, one a data beam and the other a reference beam.

The technology was on display at Maxell's booth at the NAB show in Las Vegas this week (see a model drive with a media cartridge below).



The first drives should hit in the second half of next year, according to Liz Murphy, InPhase's vice president of marketing (InPhase developed the tech and licenses it to others). There's already one OEM signed up to sell drives in Germany, and the company should be announcing U.S.-based partners later this year, she says.

Of course, the first drives and discs won't come cheap. Murphy estimates that the drives will sell for $15,000 to $20,000 and 300GB will be around $150 a piece. That places holographic systems squarely in the professional arena, at least for the next several years. Given how quickly prices drop in the tech world, however, a holographic drive could be in your PC--or your living room recorder--within a decade.