GE unveils 500GB disc ready for consumer market
While today, the high capacity disk for consumer market, the Blu-Ray discs can hold between 25GB and 50GB. GE announces it has a disc that can store 500 gigabytes (GB) of data, equivalent to 100 DVDs.
The technology called micro-holographic, the MH disc has the same size as existing DVD discs, is aimed first at the archive industry. But the company believes it can eventually be used in the consumer market place and home players. Micro-holographic discs can store more data than DVDs or Blu-ray because they store information on the disc in three dimensions, rather than just pits on the surface of the disc.
The challenge for this area of technology has been to increase the reflectivity of the holograms that are stored on the discs so that players can be used to both read and write to the discs. Brian Lawrence, who leads GE’s Holographic Storage said on the GE Research blog: "Very recently, the team at GE has made dramatic improvements in the materials enabling significant increases in the amount of light that can be reflected by the holograms."
GE believes this technology will take off because players can be built which are backwards compatible with existing DVD and Blu-ray technologies.
In a statement the firm said: "The hardware and formats are so similar to current optical storage technology that the micro-holographic players will enable consumers to play back their CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs."
”GE’s breakthrough is a huge step toward bringing our next generation holographic storage technology to the everyday consumer,” [Via MarketWatch]
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