New H-ROM Technology
Star Trek introduced us to holographic displays some 30 years ago, and in their space travel and times of tomorrow, it seems that tomorrow has crept up on us already.

InPhase Technologies is sampling and offering new holographic storage media. It was only a few years ago that IBM researchers were already building prototypes for the development of storing data using holograms. IBM’s Almaden Research Center built a precision system called Photorefractive Information Storage Materials (PRISM) to test and evaluate photosensitive materials.

Using blue-green argon laser, they split the light into a reference and object beam. The object beam, which is the carrier for the data is expanded to fully illuminate a spatial light modulator (SLM). An SLM, much like a LCD screen, displays a grid of pixels that are on or off. An interference beam results from the laser passing through the SLM and is recorded on the media (originally photosensitive crystal).

IBM had 2 major problems: power and size. In an industry where size, speed and power requirements are everything, it was evident, that their system was HUGE. InPhase Technologies has brought down the size their media down to the size of a DVD-RAM cartridge.

The new H-ROM, released for public use, will be able to store a whopping 300gigs of data per 130mm disc (data transfer at 20MB/s)! Using the red laser for now, InPhase plans to release greater storage discs, using the green and blue lasers as costs come down.

Read more about this new technology here.

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