InPhase announces 300GB Disc

InPhase announces 300GB Disc
InPhase Technologies, a subsidiary company of Lucent Technologies has announced that it will begin marketing a computer disc that has 60 times more capacity than the traditional DVD, as early as next year.

The discs will be able to hold 300 gigabytes of data and have been manufactured using the Tapestry holographic memory technology. This technology uses the principle of interference of light to store data. These holographic discs can read and write data at about 10 times the speed of a DVD. This disc was showcased at the International Broadcast Equipment Exhibition in Tokyo last week. Colorado-based InPhase has intimated that it is partnering Hitachi/Maxell in the commercial marketing of this disc. Liz Murphy, a spokeswoman for InPhase said that unlike normal DVD, the holographic disc was able to store million bits of data by virtue of the interference principle.

This means that data can be read and written at a faster clip. The Tapestry system basically splits a laser beam into a signal beam and a reference beam. A holograph is formed when these two beams intersect at a point. A spatial light modulator then encodes data onto the signal beam by translating the electronic data of 0s and 1s into light and dark pixels.

In contrast to this process, the data on a normal DVD is incorporated by measuring the so-called "microscopic ridges" on the disc surface. Both the Blu-Ray as well as the HD-DVD formats use the same process but differ in the manner the wavelength is used to encode data.