GE’s new holographic storage burns 500GB discs at the speed of a Blu-ray and higher recording speed paving the way to commercializing micro-holographic material can support on one disc the same storage capacity as 20 standard Blu-ray discs. Holographic storage is absolutely nothing like CDs, DVDs, or Blu-ray, except for the part about a spinning plastic disc and a laser and instead of bouncing said laser off of the disc to read out ones and zeros, a holographic disc stores data in three dimensional patterns inside the material of the disc itself……………
GE Global Research, the technology development arm of the General Electric Company announced another major breakthrough in the development of next generation optical storage technology. GE’s research team has successfully demonstrated a micro-holographic material that can support data recording at the same speed as Blu-ray discs. This result builds upon the April 2009 demonstration of a threshold micro-holographic storage material that can support 500 gigabytes of storage capacity in a standard DVD-size disc. Peter Lorraine, Manager of the Applied Optics Lab at GE Global Research, will discuss the breakthrough during a presentation today at the IEEE’s Joint International Symposium on Optical Memory & Optical Data Storage Topical Meeting (ISOM/ODS) being held in Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii. The ISOM/ODS brings together the world’s foremost experts in optical memory and data storage technologies. GE’s breakthrough in recording speed, along with other technical improvements that have been made over the past two years has micro-holographic technology more poised than ever for commercialization.
“During the past two years, our research team has been focused on material improvements to increase the recording speed and making other key advances needed to ready GE’s micro-holographic technology for market,” said Lorraine. “With a speed to match Blu-ray’s, discs made from GE’s advanced micro-holographic materials are an attractive solution for both archival and consumer entertainment systems.” With higher recording speeds required in the professional archival industry, the latest breakthrough by GE researchers will advance the company’s interests in commercializing GE’s micro-holographic technology in this market space. Lorraine also noted that the breakthrough in recording speed could hasten the entry of GE’s micro-holographic technology into the consumer electronics market. Future micro-holographic discs using GE’s proprietary material will read and record on systems very similar to a typical Blu-ray or DVD player. In fact, the hardware and formats can be so similar to current optical storage technologies that future micro-holographic players will enable consumers to play back their CDs, DVDs and BDs. In the months ahead, GE’s research and licensing teams will be sampling media to qualified companies interested in licensing its proprietary holographic data storage platform, a comprehensive portfolio that includes materials, discs, optical systems for manufacturing and optical drive technologies. “This latest breakthrough in Holographic Data Storage represents a significant step forward on the path to commercializing this technology,” said William Kernick, Vice President of Technology Ventures for GE. “We are looking forward to engaging with strategic industry partners to create an exciting new solution in the marketplace.”
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