HOLOGRAPHIC DATA STORAGE SYSTEM (HDSS)

INTRODUCTION

Magnetic and conventional optical data storage technologies are approaching physical limits beyond which individual bits may be too small or too difficult to store. Holographic memory is developing technology that has promised to revolutionalise the storage systems. It can store data upto 1 Tb in a sugar cube sized crystal. Data from more than 1000 CDs can fit into a holographic memory System. Holographic data storage is an approach of storing information throughout the volume of a mediumnot just on its surface. It is based on the principle of holography. With the rapidly increasing demand for

WHY DO WE NEED THIS?

For Internet applications alone, industry estimates are that storage needs are doubling every 100 days
-Nelson Diaz, Lucent Technologies

Optoelectronics Industry and Technology Development Association projects that by the year 2010, a storage system serving an average LAN will need 10 TB and a WAN server will require 100 TB to 1 petabyte of storage
- Red Herring

WHAT IS HOLOGRAPHY?

Holography is a technique of recording patterns of light to produce three dimensional object. Holographic memory is a technique that can store information at high density inside crystals or photopolymers.

COMPONENTS OF HOLOGRAPHIC MEMORY

The holographic memory system is made up of the following basic components:
Blue-green Beam

argon laser

splitters to spilt the laser beam to direct the laser beams

Mirrors LCD

panel (spatial light modulator) to focus the laser beams crystal or photopolymer

Lenses

Lithium-niobate Charge

coupled device camera(CCD)

OVERVIEW OF HOLOGRAPHIC DATA STORAGE

THE PRACTICAL SETUP

THE GREEN ARGON LASER

Laser

light is a green 514.5-nm line of an argon-ion laser. system is equipped with an argon (514.5-nm) or a krypton (676nm) laser power delivered to the apparatus prior to the object/reference beam splitter is as much as 100-400

The

Optical

WHAT IS SLM?
A

spatial light modulator is used for creating binary information out of laser light. The SLM is a 2D plane, consisting of pixels which can be turned on and off to create binary 1s and 0s.

WHAT IS CCD ?

CCD CCD CCD

- Charge Coupled Device. is a light sensitive device. converts pixels in images into electric charge. contains a separate value for each colour.

CCD

ABOUT LITHIUM NIOBATE CRYSTAL

Chemical Formula- LiNbO3. It has high photorefractive sensitivity & stability. It has trigonal structure. Molecular weight - 147.9. Band gap - 4eV.

MULTIPLEXING TECHNIQUE

Unlike magnetic storage mechanisms which store data on their surface, holographic memories store information throughout their whole volume. This method of storing multiple pages of data in the hologram is called multiplexing.

There are SIX types of multiplexing

Angular Multiplexing Wavelength Multiplexing Spatial Multiplexing Peristrophic Multiplexing Shift Multiplexing Phase-Encoded Multiplexing

STORAGE INSIDE THE PHOTOSENSITIVE MEDIUM

In holographic data storage, an entire page of information is stored at once as an optical interference pattern within a thick, photosensitive optical material.

RECORDING

Data stream is sent to the SLM as 0s and 1s.

Forms a checkerboard pattern 1s transmit light, 0s block light

Beam is split
Light passing through SLM is the signal (object) beam Reflected beam is the reference beam

Beams interfere in the medium to produce hologram much like before

READING

Beam no longer split Reference beam is diffracted off the recorded grating (hologram)

Reconstructs matrix

Projected using optic onto CCD

Converts into data stream

ADVANTAGES

PC with a holographic technology platform (HoloPCs) will be able to access data more rapidly and in a qualitatively different manner than conventional PCs. Two-dimensional data saving systems such as CDs and DVDs record and retrieve files in a serial fashion -- one bit at a time. Holographic data systems retain and retrieve data in parallel, a total (million- bit) page of files at a time. The interface of holography and robotics may make holobots that learn through creative identification of useful patterns in big quantities of files.

DISADVANTAGES

Manufacturing cost HDSS is very high and there is a lack of availability of resources which are needed to produce HDSS. Holograms appear dimmer because their patterns must share the material's finite dynamic range. Writes in the same fashion can degrade previous writes in the same region of the medium.

APPLICATION: Holographic Versatile Disc(HVD)

An HVD (holographic Versatile Disc), a holographic storage media, is an advanced optical disc thats presently in the development stage. An HVD would be a successor to todays Blu-ray and HDDVD technologies.

COMPARISON
Parameters DVD Capacity Disk diameter 4.7GB 120mm BLU-RAY 25GB 120mm Yes 405 nm (blue) HVD 3.9TB 120mm Yes 532 nm (green) 1gbps

Hard coating no Laser wave length wave 650 nm (red)

Data Transfer 11.08mbps36 mbps Rate (raw data)

CONCLUSION

The future of holographic memory is very promising. The page access of data that holographic memory creates will provide a window into next generation computing by adding another dimension to stored data. Holographic memory will most likely be used in next generation super computers where cost is not as much of an issue.