HolographicRecording
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Sony speeds up its holographic storage system
Having already increased the storage capacity of its holographic storage system, Sony's now turned its attention to speeding up data transfer rates, and it certainly doesn't look to be wasting any time ratcheting things up. According to Tech-On, Sony's managed to increase the transfer rate of its "coaxial type" holographic data storage system from a mere 3 Mbps to 92 Mbps and 107 Mbps for read and write times, respectively. That considerable leap was apparently achieved by using a new image-stabilization technique developed by Sony (artfully illustrated above), along with an improved CMOS sensor that allows the system to operate at a higher frame frequency. Sony's far from done yet, however, promising to eventually increase transfer rates to a cool 1 Gbps by boosting the laser output and increasing the sensitivity of the recording medium.
Sony demos four-layer holographic recording technique
Sony looks to be making steady progress with its attempts at holographic recording, recently announcing that it's managed to bump up its previous single-layer Micro-Reflector recording technique to a full four-layers. As with the previous system, Sony used a standard blue-violet semiconductor laser diode to write on the 250 μm-thick photopolymer recording layer, with nothing more than a few optical parts added to change the focal point depth in order to write on multiple layers. They've apparently still got quite a bit more work to do, however, as they've reportedly discovered that the reproduction signal gets significantly weaker by the time it reaches the fourth layer (about half that of the first layer), with the data transfer rate also suffering as a result. Sony seems confident that it'll be able to overcome that problem soon enough though, even going so far as to boast that it'll one day have a 500GB disc made up of twenty layers packing 25GB apiece.
Sony demos "cheap" holographic recording technique
Ever since we first laid eyes on a holographic sticker as small children, we knew that this technology would change the landscape of data storage forever (not really, but it makes for a good story), and now Sony has come along and introduced a new way of burning holographic discs that will supposedly expedite the rollout of these magical drives to the average consumer. At this year's International Symposium on Optical Memory taking place in the Kagawa Prefecture of Japan, Sony is showing off its "Micro-Reflector recording" technique which uses an off-the-shelf blue violet semiconductor laser diode for writing data to a 0.3 millimeter-thick photopolymer medium sandwiched by 0.6 millimeter-thick glass substrates without any of the spatial light modulators or CMOS sensors found in traditional holographic systems. How do they achieve this nifty feat, you ask? Simple: the laser beam is "split into two so that one of them irradiates the front side of a medium as a reference light while the other is emitted to the backside as a recording light. By precisely aligning focal points of the two lights with a servo technology, a minute interference fringe corresponding to a 1 bit recording mark is formed. When a laser light (reproduction light) is emitted on the front side of the medium having interference fringes, the recording light is reproduced. This light advances from the fringes to the medium front side as if the fringes reflect the reproduction light." It's all so obvious when you think about it, we're surprised that companies like Optware and InPhase didn't come up with this method first.
