InPhase begins shipping holographic storage
InPhase Technologies has begun bulk shipping of its 300GB holographic storage disks and drives, the firm said yesterday. The Tapestry HDS-300R drive costs $18,000, with the 1.5mm-thick platters running to $180 a piece. The firm already claims a series of high profile customers, including Turner Broadcasting, the US Geological Survey, and Lockheed Martin.
InPhase’s roadmap sees a series of capacity increases, with disks expanded to 1.6TB in 2010. Data is currently transferred from the platters, which are expected to have a 50-year lifespan, at 20MBps.nPhase marketing VP Liz Murphy said: “We’ve also tried to make it as easy to integrate as possible from a software perspective. So it can emulate a DVD, CD-R, magnetic optical disc or tape drive. So software companies don’t have to do any major changes to write to it in native mode.”
Despite pitching the price point somewhere in the mid to high-end tape drive, InPhase says it is not interested in the backup market and will concentrate on archiving. CEO Nelson Diaz said: “We’re not going to play in the back-up market at all.”
A re-writeable version of the format is expected in 2008, however.
This technology pretty much eliminates Blue-ray as a storage media. However, the price tag on this technology is going to prevent it from achieving their long term goals for a very long time. Considering a Blue-ray disc is about $30, and a drive is $800 these discs are $160 that would mean the drives could be in the $4000 range.
Of course this is just an estimate based on comparing it to Blue-Ray. I have a feeling these drives, because the technology is so advanced, could cost up to $10,000 at most. (I remember reading an article to that effect, but it is long lost.) But only time will tell.
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