Sowhat used our newssubmit to point us to an article on PCworld that has more information on the one Terrabyte Optical Disc's we reported earlier about.
The discs that should be comercially available within a year uses polarized collinear holography, that splits the laser beam into 1 million narrower beams:
Laser Splitting |
The system first splits a laser source into two beams: signal (data-carrying) and reference beams. The signal beam goes through a spatial light modulator, which has pages of data arranged in a checkerboard pattern. The pattern either blocks or transmits light; therefore the signal beam will encode data via the spatial light modulator. This encoded beam then interferes with the reference beam via an optical lens to record onto a photosensitive volumetric recording medium.
By changing the angle or wavelength of the reference beam, the technology allows many different data pages to be recorded in three dimensions and read out in the same recording medium, allowing for enormous storage capacity.
In this form, though, the technology is costly, unreliable, and not compatible with existing disc media.
"That was the reason why it has been said that an optical disc based on holography is difficult for commercialization," Machida said. Optware claims to have developed a reliable method of storing data in 3D on existing CD/DVD media
It really sounds promising but will probably very very expensive and will probably only be usefull for large companies. More about the technology can be found in the article on PCworld.com.
Source: PCworld.com
