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Overview
Downloading a movie from a sugar cube-sized crystal may no longer be the stuff of sci-fi: IBM's five-year old holographic data storage system (HDSS) program is advancing toward the compact storage of BILLIONS of bytes of rapidly-accessible information. Capable of holding more than one magnitude of the information of today's largest magnetic hard disk drives, holographic storage can also input and retrieve data considerably faster than current storage methods, making it a potentially valuable technology in such areas as aviation, computing, image processing and telecommunications.
How it works
The quick retrieval and storage of huge amounts of data holographically is possible because lasers can store "pages" of electronicpatterns within a volume of special optical materials instead of just the surface. In traditional holography, each viewing angle gives a different view of the same object. In holographic storage, instead of presenting another view of the same object, a different page of information is presented. Up to 10,000 pages (each with one megabit of information) have been stored in a crystal the size of a sugar cube. And because there are no mechanical moving parts and all the information in each "page" is accessed simultaneously, holographically-stored data can be input or read (accessed) very rapidly -- a speed of one billion bits a second has already been demonstrated.
Future Applications
The vast storage and rapid access potential of holographic storage could make it ideal for recording high quality video images for application in a variety of industries. In telecommunications, the technology could enhance the quality and availability of system performance, video-on-demand and digital motion pictures. For the aerospace industry, it could provide a compact, lightweight and robust information system. It could increase the potential for image processing for medical, video and military purposes. Unique to holographic data storage is the ability to perform essentially immediate data searches through huge digital libraries by simply illuminating the media with all of the stored information (a holograph) with a pattern of the requested information.
For Researchers
IBM Research CyberDigest: Report on Coding Techniques for Holographic Storage
IBM Research CyberDigest: Two-Dimensional Interleaving Schemes with Repetitions
Looking into a Crystal Cube (Research Magazine issue 2 1997)
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