Heard of a CD?Ofcourse.
Heard of a DVD?Yes.
The capacity of a CD is 702 MB while for a DVD is 4.7 GB for single
layer and more than 7 GB for dual layer.
What after this?Its the Blu-ray disk with the capacity of 27 GB for single layer and approximatly 50 GB for dual layer keeping the size of the disk same.The difference lies in the king of laser used to write and read the data.In case of DVD and CD a Red laser is used while in a Blu-ray disk(BD) a blue laser is used which is or shorter wavelength.
A disk that had a capacity of 300 GB which in future is going to get 6 TB and the shelf life of 50 years.
Well i am not talking about something in the fiction rack of a library.This is
Holographic Disk.
This is a
technology that is being developed by Hitachi and InPhase Technologies.they are planning to launch this holographic disk in the end of this year.
SHOCKED!!!! More shocking is the technology behind this.It is something that we often see in many places-Hologram.
The technology uses lasers to store data in a number of 3D hologram images enabling it to save several hundreds of data pages in one location.The holographic storage system uses light from a single laser split into two beams; the signal beam and the reference beam. The hologram is formed at the intersection point of these two beams, in the recording medium. By varying the reference beam angle, wavelength, or media position, several different holograms can be recorded in the same volume of material.Since the lasers don't require mechanical components to be moved, the data access times are extremely low, and in theory, will be faster than any conventional disk drive.A Holographic disk can read and write simultaneously giving an advantage over any other optical media.Its has a reading capacity of 120 MB/sec.
Well,once on hearing 6 TB in a disk,the first question that come to our mind is that what will a common person do with such a huge amount of memory?
The answer was given by Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in the 1980's when he said that no one will need a storage capacity of more than 640 KB.Same is the case now,today we feel that we might not need such a huge amount of data but with the passage of time,this amount of memory will seem to be less.
In the end to conclude,this is a technology that will change the entire way of storage and will surly make it hard for other optical media to take a share in the market.