Holographic Memory

Holography was discovered 58 years ago and the first presentations of the principle of holographic recording was made 16 years after that. Holographic recording technology has the potential to realize 200-Gigabyte to 1-Terrabyte optical discs. [Good Article to read for technical details: "Holographic Memory" by Gregory T. Huang -- cover story of MIT's Technology Review, September, 2005]

Holographic recording is set to become the standard for the so-called 4th-generation optical disc. The 1st generation was the compact disc (CD), the 2nd was the digital videodisc (DVD), and the 3rd is currently being contested by the Blu-ray Disc and the High-Definition DVD (HD DVD).
The 4th-generation disc is expected to push capacity to between 200 Gbytes and 1 Tbyte. Once implemented, the first gainers would be users of data-intensive applications such as video editing and corporate data archiving.

Some of the key players in this sector are

• InPhase Technologies, Inc of the US. The company recently announced achievement of a recording density equivalent to 140 Gbytes when converted to a 12cm disc side.
• Optware Co Ltd of Japan reported successful operation of a 100-Gbyte disc.
• Sony Corp of Japan also developed an 80-Gigabyte disc based on holographic principles.
• Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology of Korea, Thomson of France, Philips Research of the Netherlands and Daewoo Electronics Corp of Korea are also having research and develpment activities in these directions.