DJ Sundog - from the toot-lab
Back to optical jukeboxes we go!
[Cerebyte] wants to build palm-sized cartridges that can store 10,000TB of data.
[...]
This demo system comprises a single read-write rack for storage accessibility as well as several library racks. The firm used only commercial off-the-shelf equipment to build it.
Kit Rhett Aultman
@cstanhope @djsundog By "holographic storage", do you mean the versatile holographic disc?
Your weary 'net denizen
@djsundog As somebody who had the good (mis)fortune to work on a prior attempt to replace magnetic tape as the standard for archive, I do wish them luck.
I worked on holographic storage, and I watched that video somebody posted earlier. The technology stack is almost exactly the same except for the medium. It'll be interesting to find out whether we hear anymore about them a decade from now.
Kit Rhett Aultman
@cstanhope @djsundog Ah, yes, I remember reading about InPhase, too! I think because of the words used in the name, I think of "versatile holographic disc" as a sort of generic for "holographic optical storage", for good or for ill. I've never met anyone who worked on those kinds of technologies before, though. There was a lot of nice hype about it and then it just kinda...went poof. If it's not too an uncomfortable question, why do you think that whole wing of industry didn't pan out?
Your weary 'net denizen
@roadriverrail @djsundog That was a competitor's product. I worked for InPhase, but I took a quick look at the wikipedia page. The InPhase approach did not include a servo layer on the disc. We were getting servo information from the recovery process itself (which is difficult when your read process is affected by temperature and humidity across multiple parameters). I have no idea how similar the chemistry of their storage medium was to ours, but the overall storage mechanism sounds similar.
Kit Rhett Aultman
@cstanhope You did great. As someone who's done a lot of low-level systems engineering on various "zero billion dollar" devices, I just have a fascination with...if you'll forgive the term..."doomed technology", and when it's really niche, like holographic storage, you never really know the story unless you hear it from an insider. Thank you so much!
Your weary 'net denizen
@roadriverrail Ugh... I didn't make my points as clearly as I wanted to, but hopefully you can fill in the gaps left by my poor, rushed communication. 😆
Your weary 'net denizen
@roadriverrail Things that used to matter (physical media and to avoid piracy of said physical media) became less so once companies that distribute media had largely landed on: managed archive "in the cloud" distributed to people always connected to the internet using cryptography to avoid disruption to the business model.
And the demand for individual archives have similarly dried up through the ubiquitous use of clouds and large enough drives. So consumer demand was never going to be a thing.
Your weary 'net denizen
@roadriverrail Unfortunately, this potential customer base ended up being small and conservative, and I am unaware of any products based on this tech that ever successfully reached that point of delivery and incremental improvements.
Finally, the rest of the world does not stand still. Established technologies continued to improve.
Your weary 'net denizen
@roadriverrail It just takes an unknown amount of time and money. I believe all the problems were solvable, but I have no idea if there was ever enough time or money to do so.
You also need customers willing to pay for expensive devices so that you can get to the point where you are making incremental improvements that drop prices and drive broader adoption.
Your weary 'net denizen
@roadriverrail I will try to separate my specific experience at InPhase from the larger industry. I think there were large challenges that could not be overcome:
1. Engineering and production challenges.
2. Having enough interested customers.
3. The world does not stand still.
It's hard to take a product from optical table operated by PhDs to a device that can be managed by non-experts.
(I'm going to untag @djsundog here, but he can pop in at this point if he is.)
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