Slashdot Log In
GE Introduces 500GB Holographic Disks
Posted by
samzenpus
on Mon Apr 27, 2009 12:47 PM
from the longest-CD dept.
from the longest-CD dept.
bheer writes "According to the NYTimes, at a conference next month, GE will debut their new holographic storage breakthrough — 500GB disks that will cost 10 cents a GB to produce at launch. GE will first focus on selling the technology to commercial markets like movie studios and hospitals, but selling to the broader corporate and consumer market is the larger goal."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
I Could Be Really Excited About This--Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
"This could be the next generation of low-cost storage," said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.
The G.E. development, however, could be that pioneering step, according to analysts and experts.
So a player that could read microholographic storage discs could also read CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. But holographic discs, with the technology G.E. has attained, could hold 500 gigabytes of data.
You guys remember that cool new technology that was going to revolutionize the way we store data? The one that was just 11 years away? Well we could be one year closer to that realization today perhaps maybe.
People that know more than you and might even be experts possibly speculated that this might be a reality within some amount of time. It brings me great joy to announce to you that now we're maybe in the ballpark. You yourself have the chance to be alive when this thing hits. And it could be big.
Perhaps tomorrow it will be in my computer or the fabrication process might not ever be cheaply implemented and then we could wait longer than five years possibly. "It's so tantalizingly exciting but still just over that next hill we think," is what I said last year and now look. I may have been correct or at least within one standard deviation of time for this product.
This is exciting to the point that I very well may scream. I think now is the time to possibly ask yourself: are you ready for what might turn into something big? Because it could be around the corner.
Re:I Could Be Really Excited About This--Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
Did you know, statistically it is possible that every molecule in your body will spontaneously relocate itself to the moon? This COULD happen!
Parent
Re:I Could Be Really Excited About This--Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
Bullshit. It's more likely that they'll relocate to a NASA sound stage.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
+1 Douglas Adams!
"Infinite Improbability Drive"
Re:I Could Be Really Excited About This--Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I Could Be Really Excited About This--Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
On the plus side, Holographic storage is perpetually 2-5 years away, which makes it ever so much closer than fusion, which is forever 20 years out.
That reminded me of my Computation Theory class, where some sets were "more infinite" than others.
Damn you. ;)
Parent
Re:I Could Be Really Excited About This--Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:I Could Be Really Excited About This--Maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
GNU HURD is no longer 2-5 years away. Even the debian port has stopped being remotely useful.
Parent
Re:I Could Be Really Excited About This--Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
They sell ecomagination!
Parent
Not good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
$0.10/gb * 500 GB = $50. I can buy a 1 TB hard drive for around $80. Why would I use this stuff?
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
$0.10/gb * 500 GB = $50. I can buy a 1 TB hard drive for around $80. Why would I use this stuff?
Because it's holographic!
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
RS
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
It's what your data needs!
-Peter
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the disk is holographic (as opposed to the data), doesn't that mean it's not actually there?
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:4, Funny)
Yep. It also means all the data is stored on the surface of a sphere surrounding the disk [wikipedia.org].
I'll crawl back to my hole now,
-l
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Informative)
It appears that they are referring to a CD or DVD like product not a hard drive.
From the article:
In G.E.â(TM)s approach, the holograms are scattered across a disc in a way that is similar to the formats used in todayâ(TM)s CDs, conventional DVDs and Blu-ray discs. So a player that could read microholographic storage discs could also read CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. But holographic discs, with the technology G.E. has attained, could hold 500 gigabytes of data. Blu-ray is available in 25-gigabyte and 50-gigabyte discs, and a standard DVD holds 5 gigabytes.
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the next generation of optical storage, not hard drives. It's meant to be the follow up to BluRay discs. (Which already contain a simplified version of holographic technology.) $50/disc is too expensive for the short term, but I imagine the idea is to drive the price down through economics of scale. By the time they've got most of the specialty applications out of the way, they can move on to the early adopters. i.e. The people willing to pay $30/movie to watch Spiderman XI on their ED (extreme definition) television sets.
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
$0.10/gb * 500 GB = $50. I can buy a 1 TB hard drive for around $80. Why would I use this stuff?
Power surges and giant magnets probably won't erase a holographic disc.
The media is separate from the read/write mechanism so being able to read the media (outside of a clean room-equipped lab) is not tied to the lifetime of a single drive's mechanical components.
It's a lot harder to accidentally erase the contents of a WORM storage device.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because a 1TB hard drive has a minimum of 3 platters. This could get it done in 2 platters. And that matters. A lot. First there is size, second there is the number of moving parts required. And that is with this tech at its infancy and HDD tech being very mature.
Then there's also the issue of durability. It will be interesting to see if this new format breaks down, or if it can store data more indefinitely.
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nero is pretty good at making coasters. It made 3 last night, until I said fuck it and used the crappy roxio that comes with XP. It worked just fine. :)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's disc, not disk.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But to the extent that there are any rules for such things, "disk", in the context of computing, is spelled with a "k".
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Blu-ray Disc also uses "disc", as does the DVD Forum's semi-official expansion of DVD as "digital versatile disc". The pattern here is that optical storage uses "disc", while magnetic storage uses "disk".
And, of course, the 1990s-era magneto-optical "disck" completes the taxonomy.
Re:For the same reasons we use discs now (Score:4, Funny)
So that whirring spinning noise coming from my DVD player is just a trapped hamster then ?
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:4, Funny)
So this is one of them newfangled holodrives, eh?
Can't wait to pop this baby in and fire it up.
OH SHIT WAIT DON'T OPEN THE BOX! You can't expose these to light! FUCK!
Parent
Holoduke (Score:5, Funny)
Will this hologram technology be capable of storing a Holoduke?
Sure it would... (Score:4, Funny)
...and it'll store it Forever too!
Parent
Hard drives are cheaper now. (Score:5, Insightful)
1 terra byte drives cost around $100. That is 10 cents a gig at retail. So they cost less than 10 cents a gig to manufacture.
Re:Hard drives are cheaper now. (Score:5, Funny)
If you sold them for less than they cost to manufacture you'd qualify for bailout money.
Parent
Re:Hard drives are cheaper now. (Score:5, Funny)
If you sold them for less than they cost to manufacture you'd qualify for bailout money.
No. If you sold them for less than the cost of manufacture you would be a horizontally integrated Japanese manufacturer.
Parent
Expensive (Score:2, Insightful)
They word the pricing to make it sound attractive, only 10c/GB, but that makes this 500GB disk a hideously expensive $50! That's too much.
By the time this tech comes out, that will be orders of magnitude more than HD prices. Maybe even flash storage will be cheaper by then.
Re:Expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and like all optical storage in the past, by the time it reaches price parity with hard drives, it will take so many of them to back up a single hard drive that it will be near useless. Remember when DVD-R seemed like it had promise? Well by the time I could afford to do a backup of my collection of HDs, I had to order two spools of a hundred to do it. BD-R is still only down to about $0.18/gig (and double that if you want 50 GB discs), so it still has to drop in half to reach parity, but the sweet spot for hard drives is 1TB, and it would take 40 of the 25 GB discs to back up one drive. That makes it very nearly useless for backups because you can't automate dozens of disc changes. So it still hasn't reached price parity and it is already way, way beyond impractical as a backup medium.
For optical media to really matter to me, burners would need to be available at consumer prices this year so that they would be starting to make their way into mainstream computers by two years from now. That way it will only take 4-8 discs to back up an average hard drive by the time the burners are broadly available. Unfortunately, this is still in the laboratory stage, which means that it probably won't be in consumers' hands for at least five years. Assuming HD density continues to increase at somewhere approaching current levels, this will likely take over a hundred discs to back up a typical hard drive by the time consumers get it, making it even farther behind than Blu-Ray is today, and nearly as bad as DVDs are today. And ten cents a gig would be okay right now. By five years from now, that will be about 50 times more expensive per gig than hard drives, so roughly on par with Blu-Ray today cost-wise. Thus, by the time this comes out, the cost to back up a typical hard drive with this technology will be about 2.5x more expensive than it is today using Blu-Ray.
Unless something changes fairly dramatically, I'd expect flash to make optical media completely obsolete within about five years. Optical media is already impractical for backups, for carrying around data with you, etc. and Internet downloads are rapidly becoming a viable replacement for physical media for movies and music. It's a shame; optical seemed like it had a lot of potential two decades ago, but the industry got way behind and can't seem to catch up. If anything, they seem to be rapidly falling farther behind.
Parent
Data Integrity? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is how robust the things are to scratches and other negative environmental effects. If it has to be enclosed in a case like the old Zip disks were, then it's effectively a fancy hard drive in a smaller and lighter format.(though slower by a huge margin I'd bet).
Unless it's as damage resistant as a normal CD or DVD, it's not going to make a blip in the marketplace.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It'd have to be *more* damage resistant, at that price. With flash drives up to 64GBs at a reasonable price, and growing all the time, and no word on if these are reusable, requiring a specific drive, etc etc. It'd be a hell of an uphill battle. Probably worse than Blu-Ray's got.
while we are talking about storage (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes ill probably get modded off topic, but it seems to me it's managed to fall below the radar where it shouldnt have
Re:while we are talking about storage (Score:4, Informative)
Tom's Hardware pretty much panned the product in its summary of flash drives.
Parent
High Density Hot Air (Score:4, Interesting)
High density discs and have been a PR staple for years. I'm still waiting for one announced in '99. Yes, disc capacity will increase gradually and at some point today's fat Blu-Rays will be hopelessly limited curios, but the trick isn't so much about jamming bits into ever smaller sectors as it is creating compatibility with installed player bases, burner ecosystems and jittery rights holders. GE doesn't come to mind as a company with experience getting that done, nevermind getting such consumer products in the stores or even out of the lab. Good luck guys but I don't see it happening.
- js.
GE is one of the big 6 media conglomerates. (Score:5, Informative)
... creating compatibility with ... jittery rights holders. GE doesn't come to mind as a company with experience getting that done, ...
Huh?
GE is one of the six conglomerates that, together, own 90% of the media in the US. It's big on movies, broadcasting, cable, news, ... For starters it owns NBC and Universal. See Wikipedia for a more complete list [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Media Lifetime is important too! (Score:4, Informative)
If you look at all the projected lifetimes of Fe-LiNiO3 devices, which I guess is they system they are talking about in their glorified press releases, they are supposed to be around 100 years at operating temperatures! Compare that to the 30 some years of DVD-R media!
Though it still isn't as good as some chalcogenide based phase change materials which are predicted to last for 100's of years, it is important step in keeping our data around.
Could also be... (Score:3, Insightful)
We need a stock bump.
But will the Entertainment Industry use it? (Score:4, Interesting)
CDs can store more than an hour of uncompressed audio, yet here we are 20 years after music CDs hit the market and they still contain the same 35-40 minutes of music as vinyl records.
The movie industry's way of coping with DVDs that can store far more than one movie has been to put one movie on a DVD, and load up the extra space with previews, outtakes, commentary, and all kinds of other crap that's not a movie.
How will the movie industry handle a DVD that can store 100 movies? Maybe by grouping them, for example the Star Trek series or films by the same director or main actor. But based on history I'm guessing won't put more than 5 or 6 movies on a disc plus hours and hours of "bonus" material.
Re:Why does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
How long does it take you to transfer 250 GB to the other side of town?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want guaranteed longevity, used existing bulk archival. That works. If, on the other hand, this is not rewritable, then the point is moot, isn't it?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In keeping with the device described in TFA, let's keep with as much current technology as possible. At 70 bit per electron, an iron atom could carry 227 bytes plus a 4 bit checksum. As iron oxide, each molecule would have 34 electrons, giving 297 bytes plus checksum. It would take 3367003367 molecules of iron oxide to carry a terabyte. What's the density of iron oxide on a disk in terms of molecules per given area?
****
1.1x10^22 atoms per gram of iron. I get 3,276,000,000 Terrabytes in a milligram of iron
Oh, now be fair. . . (Score:3, Funny)
Based on this post, it's been done for 10 years :-).
Oh, now be fair. He didn't once utter the phrases, "What?", "I don't understand" or "Where's the tea?"
-FL