Holographic Memory Discs To Outperform Blu-ray And HD-DVD (HIT, SNE, MC, NIPNY, SANYY)

The word is Maxell-Hitachi and InPhase Technologies of Colorado have developed a holographic memory disc that has mouth watering specs. And it could be in stores by summer '06.

The specs are: ~300 GB capacity (60 times more data than a normal DVD), 10x faster read/write speeds, and within 5-years capacity is said to be possible up to 1.6 terabytes with access speeds of 120 mbps. And at 13 cm across its only slightly wider and slightly thicker than a DVD.

Maxell is owned by Hitachi (ticker: HIT) and InPhase Technologies is a subsidiary of Lucent Technologies (ticker: LU).

Here are some quotes and further information with links to articles at the end:

Earlier this month, Turner Entertainment's vice president of broadcast technology, Ron Tarasoff, said his company is planning to sell holographic disks that will retail for $100 and which, in five years, will have a capacity of 1.6 terabytes each.

"That's pretty inexpensive," Tarasoff said. "Even the first versions can store 300GB per disk, and it has 160mbps data throughput rates. That's burning. Then combine it with random access, and it's the best of all worlds."

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Holographic memory instead stores data in a light-sensitive crystal material using the interference of laser light. A single light beam is split in two and then one beam is passed through a semi-transparent material. This is a grid that acts like a filter, changing different parts of the beam to encode bits of information.

The altered beam and the reference beam are then recombined in the light-sensitive material and their pattern of interference provides a record of the encoded data. Because many bits of data can be recorded and read in parallel information can be recorded and retrieved extremely quickly.

* Link to articles by ZDNet and The Financial Times.

** My last posts covering the ongoing DVD format battle:
- DVD Format Battle Development: Toshiba to License HD-DVD Technology to China

- HP Urging Blu-ray Adoption of Home Networking Capability & More Consumer-friendliness