Version: 2008
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Background on a fearless leader

The company is InPhase Technologies, and the kind of holographic storage that it demonstrated earlier this year at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas is not about projecting 3D images but is about the permanent storage of any form of digital information.

Imagine 2GB of data in an area the size of a postage stamp or a disc the size of a DVD that holds 20 full-length movies instead of just one.
The basic concept is that data is stored as patterns of light in three dimensions instead of as 0s and 1s on a flat surface. The promise is storage capacity and transfer rates an order of magnitude greater than today's DVD discs. Imagine 2GB of data in an area the size of a postage stamp or a disc the size of a DVD that holds 20 full-length movies instead of just one. (For more, see .)

InPhase isn't the only company testing products in the holographic storage field. But its recent splashy demo of its prototype drive, dubbed Tapestry, grabbed the spotlight and wowed skeptical industry observers. By 2004, the company hopes to begin shipping its new drive to the professional video market. InPhase's long-range plans include licensing its technology to other manufacturers targeting any number of markets, including, yes, the consumer distribution of movies.

This technology has a very high geek factor; read here from InPhase's own National Association of Broadcasters:
The ability to store vast amounts of information in the form of light is an achievement that transcends the merely scientific, approaching almost religious meaning. It is for this reason that, within the scientific community, holographic data storage has become a sort of "holy grail" for information technology.
This means there are a lot of white-coat types out there rooting for InPhase and companies like it. But the problem is not really the science; plenty of working prototypes, including InPhase's Tapestry drive, exist today. The problem is that today's holographic drives and the extremely delicate media that go with them cost a fortune to make and distribute. And when considering these obstacles, even other holography researchers are skeptical. Says Hans Coufal, a researcher at the IBM Almaden Research Center and one of the principal investigators of the Holographic Data Storage Systems Consortia, "I wish them well."

How do holographic storage proponents answer the raised eyebrows? Theirs is the certainty that the current DVD format will eventually max out its capacity. Given that the hunger for digital storage will never abate--for applications from high-definition video on the consumer side to medical imaging to digital cinema--something will eventually come along to replace it. Why not holographic drives?

Read one company's case for holographic storage next

The whys and hows of holographic storage | Fearless leader | The whys and hows of holographic storage | The whys and hows of holographic storage | The whys and hows of holographic storage



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