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Technology

One Terabyte On a 12-inch^H^H^H^Hcm Disk 540

Posted by timothy from the that's-a-bunch-of-movies dept.
News for nerds writes: "At InterOpto'02 - international optoelectronics exhibition hold in Chiba, Japan - OPTWARE Co.Ltd. made up of ex-Sony engineers, demoed(in Japanese) 1-terabyte super-high speed optical disk system "T-VRD." It uses hologram and stores 1 terabyte data in a 12-cm-CD-size disc, with 100Mbps - 1Gbps transfer rate. Available in 2003 as 19-inch rackmount, 2005 for PC." Update: 07/16 18:33 GMT by T : Sorry, that's centimeters, not inches, which is of course even better ;)
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One Terabyte On a 12-inch^H^H^H^Hcm Disk More

One Terabyte On a 12-inch^H^H^H^Hcm Disk

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  • There's a big difference there....
  • Another opportunity for the RIAA to change formats and resell everything!

  • timothy must work for nasa (Score:3, Funny)

    by MiddleHitter ( 473147 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @02:24PM (#3896044) Homepage
    The title says 12 inch. The summary says 12 cm. I guess it doesn't take a rocket scientist to get the two confused...
  • I can hear all the digital audio musicians/engineers rejoicing. The rest of you might want to start pushing for higher bandwidth on the last mile and content you can own instead of rent/stream. ;)
    • What on earth will we put on it?

      Libraries of Congress, of course. Either that, or copies of the human genome.

      "Pssst...kid. Wanna buy a genome?"

    • Dunno... maybe backups of all those 100+ GB hard drives floating around that you have no decent way to make a non-hard-drive backup of anymore since current media (CD/DVD) have an order or two magnitude less storage space.

      Where I work, we routinely fill up our 100 GB hard drives, running hurricane simulations and extracting the knowledge from those simulations. A "high-quality" simulation in this field nowadays eats up 40-80 GB of hard drive space, at least. That makes dissemination of the data to other interested parties a little difficult if they don't have a high speed internet connection and plenty of space to put it on after the FTP session.

      Having a high-density storage medium that rivals hard drives is a great thing since it allows us to backup this data (sorry, but when the model takes a week to run in the first place, I would like a nice backup copy of it all floating about) and also allows us to send the data via non-electronic means. Hopefully this one isn't a pipe dream. If it isn't, you can bet that we'll be in line when the first working model is produced.

      -Jellisky

  • Holographic storage? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @02:26PM (#3896073)
    Babelfish's rather loose translation:

    From the past it is researched, applying the " hologram system ", the system which was developed. With hologram system of conventional type there was a problem in compatibility and the like of the existing media such as miniaturization and cost and DVD. With the technology which this time is announced, you say these weak points were overcome by using the same company individual " polarized light Cori near hologram technology " and so on.

    Hologram technology until recently, using two object glasses, had the necessity to irradiate separate " reference beam " and " signal light ". You say with polarized light Cori near hologram technology these from one object glass the economical space, cost decrease is actualized by the fact that it makes lighting possible. In addition, we have assumed it can maintain also the compatibility of the DVD and the CD media.

    I'm not sure if the translation is making it accurate or not, but it looks like this is indeed using holographic storage and not just holographic printing.

  • cm to in. (Score:5, Funny)

    by bravehamster ( 44836 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @02:26PM (#3896085) Homepage Journal
    NASA Scientist: 12 cm, 12 inches, whats the difference?

    (cut to shot of rocket blasting off, lifting 5 feet off the ground, then falling back to earth in a huge fireball)

    NASA Scientist: Oops.

  • back to caddies? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @02:27PM (#3896099) Journal
    i wonder how scratch-resistant this is;

    i mean -- one little scratch will now render hundreds of megabytes unreadable...

    makes no difference to me if in the end half the storage space is dedicated to data-redundancy.

    i want those little data-cubes you keep seeing in Sci-Fi movies. those are neater than the disk format.

    • Re:back to caddies? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by imta11 ( 129979 )
      A local lab brought a prototype cube to my school a few years ago. You don't really need to worry about scratches as much as small vibrations causing dispersion of the bean as it travels through the 3-d space. Remember NextSetp on the discovery channel? They had a demo around 1996. It might be the same technology, just in disk form.
      • dispersion of the bean as it travels through the 3-d space

        Who would've thought, the future of data storage technology was with us the whole time: The simple, humble bean! Well, I'll be on eTrade if you need me.

    • If its really holographic storage, depending on how its implemented, it will be much more resitant to scratches than typical CD's or DVD's. Every part of a hologram contains a bit of the whole. If you shatter a hologram of a rose, you don't get lots of little parts of the rose. You get lots of little holograms of the whole original picture, each less distinct and clear than the original. Combined with digital error recovery this could make the media very resiliant.
    • I hate caddies, but I do like something other than bare optical storage. I understand that the original CD spec included the box/caddy as part of the medium (ala Minidisc or DVD-RAM carts).

      They'd be bulkier, but ultimately simpler to use/store.
    • *busily scratching hard drive platter* What was that you said?
  • its says so in the first line of the article, and its not in kanji.

    bla bla bla InterOpto'02 bla bla bla 12cm CDbla bla bla

    RTFA!

  • If you had a terabyte of MP3s, you would have approximately 250,000 songs, if you assume an average song is 4MB. If there are approximately 12 songs on a CD, you would have to own 20,833 CDs.

    If you had 1MB of video per minute, you could hold one million minutes of video. That comes out to 16666 hours of video. It would take you 694 days to watch every minute of that, or a little under 2 years!

    Now, who has that much content? Hmm? Correct my math, if I messed up. I'm not feeling too good today...
  • * LOC= Library of Congress.
    • Not including pictures, the answer is about .05 LOC per disk, or about 20 of these 1TB disks for the entire text of the collection.

      For added perspective, the Internet Archive [archive.org] lists a number of other comparisons [archive.org] to their over 100 Terabytes of web pages dating from 1996.

      Finally, in 2000 the "How Much Information?" project [berkeley.edu] attempted to estimate the total amount of information produced in all major mediums: from books to TV to the Internet to photos to x-rays and more. Based on their data (from a few years ago), every American musical recording produced each year could fit on a couple of these new 1TB disks (compressed) and every new DVD could probably fit on about a dozen. The Internet is harder to estimate, due to hidden content (databases, dynamic pages) but they estimated the "surface" web to be 25-50 Terabytes and total "web-connected documents" to be as high as 7,500 Terabytes!
  • This makes IBM look bad (well, even worse)...haven't they been working on holographic storage for years and years and years?!

  • In related news. (Score:5, Funny)

    by aengblom ( 123492 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @02:33PM (#3896172) Homepage
    In related news. Sony announces it will immediatley begin selling these disks to consumers.

    Optware Spokesman:
    "We were thinking it would take 10 years the technology to be needed, but bad jokes about our hardware's "12 inch vs. 12 cm" capabilities, beowulf of them, and how much prOn one could store on it completly overwhelmed previous storage technologies" ;-)

  • 120 mm ! : go see the optware site guys... (Score:5, Informative)

    by pruneau ( 208454 ) <pruneau@gmail . c om> on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @02:34PM (#3896182) Journal
    HERE [optware.co.jp] they will explain you what their technology is. Go to the technology section, all you will need is a flash plugin ;-)

    And of course, it's 120 mm = 12cm != 12 inches ~= 36 cm...

    Because CD-media size is a must !

    Basically, they:

    • "split" the beam of light in differents rays, each carrying data, as opposed to CD/DVD where the beam carries one bit at a time.
    • They work into the "bulk" of the recording media, instead in a 2-D way for CD/DVD
  • I think that most people would side with the fact that as a whole consumers have picked what size disc they want. We want media with the same diameter as a CD/DVD from here on out whenever possible. Why? They're easy to keep track of... unlike the little Dataplay cartridges that we've all seen stories about. I personally wonder why would you want something that small when you could have something of a more manageable size that uses the same technology... Discs maintaining the same size also ensures future drives will play old media. My DVD deck will play CDs etc... Which a very good point was made that record labels don't mind a format change to provide extra income once in a while. Collectively they've just got to learn to get over it and produce more new product worth buying... you know... good music. On the other hand you could also look at it this way. This data storage format will initially not be needed by your average consumer. Producing a propreitary system would cut initial costs to bring the technology to market. Then money could be made of the product and directed to adapting the technology to a consumer audience. It might cost much more for them to cram all the work into a 5.25 drive... or it might not be possible. Speaking of which... that is the weirdest drive enclosure I think I've ever seen... looks like a PS2 on crack.
    • We want media with the same diameter as a CD/DVD from here on out whenever possible. Why? They're easy to keep track of...

      Speak for yourself, bub. CD's have a really crappy form factor. They're too big to fit inside a pocket, need specially designed carrying cases, and have crappy latency characteristics. Give me a non-rotating piece of storage the size of a credit card. These would fit in standard-sized pockets, we already have specialized carrying cases for them (called wallets), and they wouldn't have the rotational latency issues. Now all we need is the density...

      • We want media with the same diameter as a CD/DVD from here on out whenever possible. Why? They're easy to keep track of...

        Speak for yourself, bub. CD's have a really crappy form factor. They're too big to fit inside a pocket, need specially designed carrying cases, and have crappy latency characteristics. Give me a non-rotating piece of storage the size of a credit card. These would fit in standard-sized pockets, we already have specialized carrying cases for them (called wallets), and they wouldn't have the rotational latency issues. Now all we need is the density...

        What about business card [diskduper.com] sized? Do the same form factor with this optical technology as is already done with cd, and assuming the same 50:670 data capacity ratio you'll get 76GB of storage space on a business card sized disk. Would that take care of your needs? That'd be about 116 raw cd's, or 600 high quality encoded cd's.

  • Well sorta ...

    at 100mbit/sec, we can say about 12.5 mbyte/sec transfer rates. That is really slow now-a-days for a hard drive. 1gbit/sec (125mbyte/sec) is decent, but with UDMA100/UDMA133 standard right now, this technology seems to be behind times in speed when it finally gets released for PCs a year or two from now.

    Remember, the hard drive is probably the bottleneck in almost every PC and server, particularly with huge databases. I would really like to see hard drives get faster and faster instead of bigger and bigger.
    • Well, aside from the fact that 12.5MB/sec is probably what people actually get from UDMA133, such a terabyte disk could be a very good application for WORM drives in systems that need permanant on-line storage of everything. Isn't this a feature of Plan 9?

  • Rough Translation (Score:5, Informative)

    by kawaichan ( 527006 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @02:41PM (#3896264) Homepage
    The corporation optical wear the 1TB (the tera- byte) announced the optical disk technology " tera- byte optical disk system " whose it is possible to write capacity, to the disk of 12cm CD size in the comprehensive exhibition " InterOpto'02 " of optical industrial technology.

    From the past it is researched, applying the " hologram system ", the system which was developed. With hologram system of conventional type there was a problem in compatibility and the like of the existing media such as miniaturization and cost and DVD. With the technology which this time is announced, you say these weak points were overcome by using the same company individual " polarized light Cori near hologram technology " and so on.

    Hologram technology until recently, using two object glasses, had the necessity to irradiate separate " reference beam " and " signal light ". You say with polarized light Cori near hologram technology these from one object glass the economical space, cost decrease is actualized by the fact that it makes lighting possible. In addition, we have assumed it can maintain also the compatibility of the DVD and the CD media.
    Difference of data record method such as CD drive Device of record to tera- byte disk

    Those where the reflecting horizon where structure of the tera- byte disk media puts the cubic measure hologram record material with the disk baseplate of the glass make, the pre- format is done is pasted in the one side. It is not the glass in the future, you call the schedule where the disk baseplate of the plastic make is used. In addition, at the beginning the media of the is offered, but you say relying tub Lu it will be able to offer also the media in the future.

    At the time of data record, signal light and reference beam are irradiated vis-a-vis this reflecting horizon, reference beam and the information light which are reflected to interfere inside the cubic measure hologram material, the data is recorded to the interference fringes which occur.

    When grasping the device which grasps the hologram which irradiates only reference beam, is recorded to the cubic measure record material.

    With the former DVD and CD drive, using single laser light, it does reading and writing, but with hologram technology, the bundle of the light whose large number is thin is used. In addition, the data was recorded until recently level at the bit unit, but with hologram record, it is possible to record to three-dimensional cubic measure hologram layer as a page data.

    Because of that, with the disk media which uses hologram, it is possible to write the data of 3 ten thousand bit inside hologram of diameter 500 mu m. While the respective hologram to be piled up, because it is existence possible, we have assumed it is suitable for large increasing capacity. In addition, only the 1bit data transfer could do with the pickup of former DVD/CD drive, at one time, but because with hologram system the data of 3 ten thousand bit can be read and written at one time, also data rate improves substantially, you say data transfer with the 100Mbps - the 1gbps becomes possible.

    Appraisal device " T-VRD " of the tera- byte optical disk system was displayed in the InterOpt meeting place, demonstration was done. At the same company, at the beginning we have assumed, introduction in TV station and the Government agency is anticipated, we have assumed on end of 2003 offer of 19 inch rack-mounted type system, furthermore it miniaturizes drive itself in 2005, it develops in for the foam/home server and the PC market as a consumer product.
    The drive part of T-VRD When drive was opened. As for the media being stored by the cartridge, it is The corresponding disk was displayed from each company

    Actually hologram it was recorded the media As for this way unused media. The record aspect has like the mirror high reflectance

    Yoshio Chairman and CEO Aoki Chief Executive Officer

    At the announcement meeting place, Yoshio the Aoki of Chairman and the CEO Chief Executive Officer greets, " presently in communication industry, per second also the 1TB thing data has become transmission possible. This the movie of 2 hours is something which is made transfeable in 0.1 seconds. Is, but when it reaches the point where it can exchange the large capacity data instantaneously, even on the storage side which retains that data large capacity and high speed the media which had transfer speed becomes necessary ", necessity of the tera- byte optical disk system was expressed.

    " With the former CD and DVD drive, NA value of the object glass was increased, precision of recording density was increased by the fact that wave length of the laser is reduced. Is, but with this method already the limit has been visible ", also you talked, the disk system which uses hologram emphasized that it is the system which system differs until recently completely.

    Home page of optical wear
    (As of July 16th, the information regarding this product is not published)
    Http: //www.optware.co.jp/ja/main.html

  • News blast from the future. (Score:5, Funny)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @02:43PM (#3896285)
    Headlines from 2003/2005

    Software pirates in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia immediately began selling copies of NBC's entire 2006 TV lineup, Warcraft IV-10, Photoshop 2008, and MS Office Xtra-Ultra-Uber-Nextgen on the new disks for a street price of $5, all on one disk.

    RIAA and MPAA lawyers assaulted Sony with lawsuits today, claiming that the disk assited in storage and dissemination of intellectual property and violating copyright control schemes.

    Immediately after, Canadian and European lawyers under the control of movie and recording lobbyists added a hefty tax to the sale of each disk, with collected fees sent to movie and music companies.

    Australians quickly installed $1 per/disc copy machines in Lucky Dragon stores across the continents.

    Citizens of the USA tried to read reports about the new discs, but because a Microsoft lead consortium refused to provide digital certificates to news releases, Americans cannot view the files on their computers.

  • > Sorry, that's centimeters, not inches, which is of course even better ;)
    Scarcely matters if it's in a 19 inch rackmount, does it? I mean the technology is neat but a 19inch rack is a 19inch rack - doesn't matter how small the contents are (unless they don't fit in a 19inch rack at all...)
  • One TB on a single disc. Man, I hope the plastic coating is much more sturdy than on current CDs and DVDs, it's a lot of data to lose because you didn't set the disc properly and the drawer scratched the disc as it closed.

    And titanium alloy jewel cases that aren't going to shatter and splinter when sent through the USPS or sat on by your kid/dog.

  • Hrmph (Score:2, Funny)

    by spottedkangaroo ( 451692 )
    There seems to be some confusion about this ... lemme see if I can help.

    bash$ stty erase ^H

    That should take care of the problem.

  • Who cares? (Score:2, Funny)

    by md17 ( 68506 )
    '640 Kb should be enough for anyone.' - Bill Gates

  • The size of a CD (Score:3, Funny)

    by Strange Ranger ( 454494 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @03:23PM (#3896713)
    I can see it now..
    "Free with a purchase of a new Dell!: Sony's all-in-one 40x/12x/32x/CDRW//20x/8x/4x/DVDRW//2x/1x/T-VRDRW.. con't. on p.44"

    All Your media are belong.. oh screw it

  • In the next chicktechno movie (Score:4, Funny)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @03:30PM (#3896781) Homepage Journal
    Yeah in the next Angelina Jolie movie some government agency will accidently lose the entire genetic code of every living thing on earth on one of these disks and there will be massive quantities of Chick-Fu to retreive it.

  • Johnny Mnemonic could only hold 160 GB (Score:4, Interesting)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @03:57PM (#3896997)
    I was amused by the Johnny Mnemonic movie, in which Keanu Reeve's head would explode if he didn't get the 320GB of data out of it (Johhy's capacity was only 160GB, or 'leakage' would occur). Given how far into the future it was supposed to take place, that amount seemed pretty small. Johnny's 'futuristic' capacity looks ever more ludicrous with each new jump in real-world capacity.

  • Its remarkable to me how unimaginative this community is at times. Terabytes are nothing to use even with today's technology.

    This is barely enough to start cracking the doors to the real future of computers. With this, you may be able to store a few seconds of fully immersive video. I'm talking the kind of stuff that gives you limit of human sight resolution for anything beyond arm's length no matter what direction you look in. Add this storage to flight simulator technology that notes your head position and dynamically reproduces the right resolutions across your field of vision using 210 degree goggles, and you've got an experience in the making.

    Another technology that would soak it up in seconds would be life recording. I've got a fairly poor memory and generally forget completely almost anything beyond three years ago. I'd LOVE to be able to wear a device that records my every moment in 360 degrees with fully directional audio. But, really, the recording technologies, including storage, won't be the most difficult part of the development. The really tough part will be the technology to search the database. It will need to be able to interpret everything seen and heard in order to be able to replay what I'd like without my having to remember times and places. Furthermore, it would need to do so in near real time as the only time that it might have to "catch up" would be when I slept...actually, I'd probably won't much of that time recorded too. Expand that to recording not only my personal experience but anything occurring anywhere on any property that I own in full 3D realistic resolution and bringing things to my attention that I've told it too and the task is at least 30 years of technology away (2^^30 * current storage capacities + 2^^24 * current processing capacities). Add recording of other aspects of the environment like smell, temperature, RF, etc and you could soak up technology forever. People will want these things.

    The day will come, probably within this century, when petabytes and petaips are to us what bits are today.

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