Posted by R Sweeney on 04/23/06 00:03

"Gene E. Bloch" <spamfree@nobody.invalid> wrote in message
news:mn.b3cd7d64c524cc0a.1980@nobody.invalid...
> On 4/22/2006, Roy L. Fuchs posted this:
>> On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 14:15:20 -0700, Gene E. Bloch
>> <spamfree@nobody.invalid> Gave us:
>>
>>>
>>> I knew that some people said they were doing holographic storage, but I
>>> thought it was in a lab scenario only (and I wasn't even sure I believed
>>> the reports). Also, I do remember products that were vaporware for years
>>> until they ... evaporated. So, cynicism, justified or not, in this case
>>> too.
>>
>> Oh no. These guys were featured articles in machine design and
>> engineering publications. It is coming down the pike.
>>
>> I figured by now we would have holo-cubes. The can read an entire
>> page in one pass, and there are several thousand pages in a cube.
>> Some guys recorded 10GB on a roll of shipping tape in Germany a few
>> years ago. Two lasers are needed. These guys' holographic recording
>> medium on disc are going to win out first, but holo-cubes are also in
>> the pipe. They can act like write once, read many RAM cubes.
>
> Better than an iPod for sure! Thanks for enlightening me.
>
> Many years ago I had an argument with a folk-dance teacher - I thought
> that someday his entire library of dance records (only 78s, 45s, and LPs,
> back then) would fit in a 1" cube. He pooh-poohed me, but I thought I was
> right.

As I recall, Rockwell's R&D lab had a 1GB holographic memory in a one-inch
cube in the early 90's.

The problem is always in the cost of the R/W lasers/optics and the computer
power required to generate an arbitrary synthetic hologram.

The poor holographic guys can never seem to get cheap enough to compete -
and magnetic disk technology keeps chasing them to bigger and bigger sizes,
making the optics and computing power problems even worse.

They are stuck in a non-virtuous loop.

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