GE unveils holographic disc breakthrough
Contributor Vivek Kemp is GE’s Reporter at Large
Scientists at GE’s Global Research Center in upstate New York announced a breakthrough in the pursuit of holographic data storage today. They have successfully demonstrated technology that can put 500 gigabytes onto a single DVD-sized disc.
“This is significant,” said Brian Lawrence, who manages GE’s holographic project. “Just imagine being able to put all this Information on a disc.”
The process works by imprinting chemical changes in the form of patterns –- holograms –- within the disc. Those holograms are then read by lasers, similar to the ones in Blu-ray players. In fact, at 500GB, these holographic discs could offer 20 times the capacity of a single-layer Blu-ray disc.
And while the technology is still a few years from market, Lawrence says the realization of this capacity opens the door to a slew of possibilities.
“Think about all the information we encounter everyday. As our digital needs grow, so will our need for digital storage,” Lawrence said. “This breakthrough puts us significantly closer to meeting that need.”
* Read “G.E.’s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc” in The New York Times
* Read Brian’s blog about the breakthrough at grcblog.com
* Read GE’s earlier blog posts about holographic technology
* Read engadget.com’s coverage
* Read GE’s announcement
I wish I understood the significance of 500GB storage on a disk. With 64 GB Thumb Drives available today and the capacity doubling every year or so, if it takes "a few more years" to bring GE’s technology to light (sorry, pun intended), the Thumb Drives will match its capacity and will use proven technology and be just as portable. Sure, you can’t easily ship a movie on a thumb drive, but movies don’t require a signifcant upgrade from Blu-Ray, do they?
The disks will eventually cost pennies like blank DVD roms. Then you can watch Extreme High Def movies on your virtual reality goggles in the future.
Tim, this is an entry level technology. Look at the bigger picture – thumb drives have come a very long way in the 6 years that they have been commonplace office items.
The fact that technology like this is in development and shows potential is far more exciting than than the form and its constraints it is intitially being presented with.
Wow this is Awesome!
When can we expect holographic disc released in market?
HOLOGRAPHIC storage = GREENER planet, since every pack of 100 DVDs will be replaced by 1 holographic disk, resulting in less plastic in our environment.
Considering the numerous technical challenges and the competitive business environment this achievement will be recorded for sure in the famous GE’s Innovation Timeline!
Well, no. Not really. Your thinking is mathematical, but not practical. And for the record, I also welcome this technology, but understand that it’s "environmental" impact is not what you think.
Gheroghe, it is true that a holographic disc can store the equivalent of 100 DVDs, this will happen on occasion. But how many 100 DVD sets do you have in your home?
DVDs have two primary purposes, entertainment and data storage. Holographic replacements for DVDs for entertainment mean that we would get box sets on one disc instead of three etc, but you aren’t going to go to the store and buy 100 movies on 1 disc.
As for data storage, holographic discs may be welcome replacements for modern solutions, but companies with data storage needs at that level don’t store things on hundreds of DVDs, they store them on servers.
Of course, replacing your DVD/Blu-ray collection with a holographic disc means "more" waste, not less.
Your falacy is similar to saying that a car that can carry 400 people for roughly the same fuel would be more environmentally friendly. While technically very true, most people don’t drive in groups of 400.
@Tim – even more so, since thumb drives are solid state, protected by a plastic shell, and are pretty much indestructable. My son once took one out of the plastic shell, washed it several times in the washing machine, and was still able to use it.
Polycarbonate disks, on the other hand, are very prone to scratching, and the more data you cram on one, the more those scratches start to matter when you’re trying to read it.
Assuming the media has the longevity, this technology is what’s needed to archive data for a long time — current DVDs, even Blue Rays store a few GB, but to be truly viable the density needs to be much higher. 500GB or more is certainly a trend in the right direction. DVD media doesn’t keep more than a few years (with some exceptions) so the prospect of long term storage is questionable anyway.
Anything based on magnetics or flash (i.e., HDDs & Thumb Drives) is temporary storage because they degrade over time (try reading your thumb drive after it’s sat on the shelf for a 5 or 10 years & see how much of your data you get back). The same will be true for SSDs based on NAND flash.
Of course, you DO have to store and handle optical media correctly, but this doesn’t seem like a huge burden to bear when the data is important. Of course it’ll always help to have redundant copies as insurance.
So, if this technology works as advertised, it really is a big deal.
So if I’m reading this correctly, we now have a massive step forward in optical(?) data storage, as opposed to magnetic and flash. It’s a shame there’s no way to simply write over previously-used optical media, or even recycle it. Which seems to be the pattern with technology – something new comes along, and we throw away the older one gradually.
Incidentally, what sort of read/write speeds can we expect once this really takes off?
It’s a shame that we’re still wasting our time with optical data storage. It is pretty much useless in this day and age. Flash Drives are the future of storage. With higher capacities, faster read/write times, smaller size, and resistance to damage, Optical media doesn’t stand a chance. I think it’s safe to assume that in the near future, all storage media will be some form of solid state and will no longer involve moving parts.
@Bill – the question is not how many 100 DVD sets do we have now but what will be our digital storage needs in the future… I totally agree with above Lawrence quote that “our digital needs grow”.
You can buy today for few hundred dollars a high definition video camera with a 30 or 60 GB hard drive (HD) and realize that you don’t have enough storage capacity to record your vacation memories. What are your options to store that information when you get home? You either transfer it on a hard/thumb drive/memory card or burn it on 4, 7, 8 or 15 DVDs depending on the camera’s HD capacity or DVD media type used. Ok, there is also the magnetic tape solution.
The HD storage option is not very attractive since you could fill it up quite fast after which you have to store it and buy another one. Then you’ll need the second HD if you want digital storage redundancy.
I find the holographic DVD solution practical and greener even if it can hold 10 DVDs, if the price is right. Storing redundant data is also easier since you have to copy only 1 disk instead of x
Bill, your fallacy is the assumption that only companies will benefit from the holographic storage. My feeling is that the consumers will benefit more. We can envision in the future video cameras that record directly on holographic disks.
We should not forget also that we live in a digital age. The number of people that are jumping into the amateur or semi-professional video hobby is growing (see youtube phenomenon) and their digital video storage needs is a painful problem right now. No, I don’t think that the use of holographic storage at its full capacity will be occasionally. On the contrary!
As for your funny comparison with a 400 people car, it is common sense, I think, that a bus is greener than a bunch of cars, even if it is half full…
Well the nice thing about this is that they won’t need a metal layer any more, at least that is what I got from the video. So no more metal = lower cost since all you would be paying for is the polycarbonate discs and dyes if it even uses them.
Also with out the metal layer you would need to phycialy break or melt the discs to destroy data
unlike with CD/DVD/Blu-ray discs which you can just toss in the microwave which damages the metal foil and the dye under it.
Pffft 500GB How about 50,000GB?
http://www.smh.com.au/news/home/technology/its-a-dvd-on-steroids/2009/05/21/1242498857369.html
Does anyone recall those sony mini disks enclosed in a plastic enclosure and a plastic slide which covered the surface exposure [slide aside] of the disk, not dissimilar to the 3.5" "floppy" disks in the days of yore. This technique completely protects the medium from fingerprints, scratches, dust, you name it. A capitol investment would be required to adopt a similar protection of the GE disks. Further, the medium itself need not be the same size as a cd/dvd. It could be smaller and still pack a punch of say 25K Gig. I suspect these little jewels will ultimately hold 1T. I dont see it as a replacement for cd, dvd, or blu ray. Rather a new medium, but holding such a vast amount of data, it must be protected from the yoyos handling them like a hamburger in their hand, thus the cover over the read/write surface. Im repeating myself. Once it hits the streets pricing will drop as always. Let the pioneers get the arrows in their backs first before jumping on board. Nuff said.
It would be interesting to see the environmental specs for the holographic media as well as the predicted useable lifetime for media. Holographic has the promise to rival LTO-4 technology in a data backup capacity with its advertised 120MB/sec speeds and capacity. Holographic won’t have all of the mechanical pitfalls and load, seek, rewind, speed matching times as with tape because it will be randomly accessible media. Providing holographic media can be made as durable as Blu-ray media, it will quickly become an excellent option for long term compliance data archival requirements.
Holographic memory / thumb drives would be a better medium way for personal data storage as CD / DVD / Blueray discs are quite vunerable to scratches and not they are not really very portable. I personally think that the long term strategy of any business’s archive won’t be versatile discs at all but Archive towers of Holomemory (SSD’s and better) which can be accessed at exceptionally low latency times via broadband or beyond and interface through fibre networking. This then relieves the need to archive data as such, as the data will always be online, and with todays encryptions, well holographic encryption would surely be the ultimate security. This all sounds SciFi but the technologies already exist, they’re just out of the reach of the average consumer and medium to small business. There should be no price for personal storage just a small token for the purchase of the product, as most research happens because corperates generally want the technology and pay for the technology as they need it, throught sponsorship or other means.
Data archive of Movies? surely this cannot be on the same scale as Data archive for Cancer research? Aids and other vaccination research or Radiography in hospitals. Yes enjoy the latest Blue Ray movies… players are still in the 100$ range after 3 years from initial launch and movies are (although slowly dropping) still over priced. Surely give the average consumer the ability to store 100 DVD onto 1 disc opens up the world of piracy, as GE say 500 cd’s of data thats 500 music albums to the average consumer. Movie and Music archives need to be completely different to that of the average consumer or the piracy will never stop. To succeed in the mass archive business one would expect mass produced media at cents per gig and reader / writers in the sub 30$ categories.
that is just my 50cents