[Zeypher]

Apparently Nintendo has made a joint patent with inPhase Technologies for Holographic Storage... if you don't know what it is, click here because it's hard to explain... but it's basically a new type of storage and format that uses light to save, and it can hold up to multiple terabytes >.>

Source: http://kotaku.com/5031293/nintendo-dabblin...graphic-storage

[Golden Legacy]

The technology is very impressive, the Wiki article had me actually genuinely amazed at the capacity of holographic storage.

I'm wondering how it will be used. Patents are made by companies everyday, many that never emerge on the market but are simply there so they have the rights to it. Other than being a glorified storage solution, I don't see how much use it will have for the video game market.

[Toasty]

Holographic storage has been around for a while (I've known about it for a few years now), and it's easy to explain. Instead of recording data in a 2D plane, or multiple 2D planes, it's stored in 3D. Holographic storage can store multiple terrabytes of information in the same space as a normal HDD

Holographic discs are likely what Nintendo is looking at. Just recently (a few months ago) scientists have been able to create re-writeable holo-discs by using a protein in the storage medium. The discs can store nearly 4 terrabytes (not terrabits, which are 8 times smaller) of information, whereas an equally sized dual layer, dual sided DVD can only store 12GB.

Last I check, a holo-disc reader was roughly twice the size of a standard 5.25" CD/DVD drive in a computer. Might even be bigger, I don't know.


The good news is is that it's not a long ways off to becoming mainstream (a decade tops in my opinion) and making blu-ray obsolete (YEYZ). Though I'm not sure how long it will be before a reasonably sized disc reader can be manufactured. At least, one small enough to fit in a VG console.


Though if Nintendo's thinking about a holographic hard drive, it'll probably be a bit longer.

[EDIT] This looks strikingly similar to the holographics disc drive I saw in an issue of Popular Mechanics a few months back. As you can see, it's still fairly large.

[Golden Legacy]

Toasty, on Aug 5 2008, 08:50 AM, said:

The good news is is that it's not a long ways off to becoming mainstream (a decade tops in my opinion) and making blu-ray obsolete (YEYZ). Though I'm not sure how long it will be before a reasonably sized disc reader can be manufactured. At least, one small enough to fit in a VG console.
Though if Nintendo's thinking about a holographic hard drive, it'll probably be a bit longer.

I don't see why you're touting it as being mainstream and bumping off Blu-Ray when even traditional DVDs have become practically the foundation of the entertainment industry.

This is technology that's meant for the future, and by that at least two decades off. It's interesting to speculate, but with the HD war having just ended, Blu-Ray still having not penetrated mass market, and the DVD selling strong 13 years after it was introduced, we're not going to be seeing this for an extremely long time.

[Toasty]

Holographic hard drives may be at least two decades off, but holographic discs are one decade off at the most. They already have disc drives (and discs) available to the public. They're just really expensive ($18000 a drive, $180 a disc).

And the only reason why DVD's are still mainstream is because blu-ray hasn't developed enough. It's still relatively new. The same thing happened when DVD's came in to replace VHS. But even though blu-ray will overtake DVD's at some point and become the preferred storage medium for movies and stuff, it's reign will only last a few years as holo-discs will come in and slowly phase blu-ray out. Just as DVD's did to VHS, and as blu-ray will likely do in the near future to DVD's.

And I'm probably wrong, but Sony still holds the patent for blu-ray, which makes developing high quality blu-ray players difficult for other companies.

But if you want something that's more than two decades off, take a look at this. 5 EXABYTES (5,242,880 Terrabytes. Don't even thing of asking me for that in gigabytes) of storage PER DISC.
Mind blowing, but no where near being publicly available. Of course, I believe there's about 160EB of data on the internet, so you'd need 32 of them to store all of the world's data, but that's still nut-numbingly amazing.


Anyway, this is about Nintendo finally getting serious about storage. So lets talk about that.

[Blue]

Wow, storage, merry ****ing christmas Nintendo, you have officially disappointed me. Why are they wasting their money on this when they should be making better games?
"Hey look, I can fit an entire manson in Animal crossing, oh woops, this game sucks giant floppy donkey ****."

[Ronald]

Because the Wii only has 512mb of storage, mister.

[Split Infinity]

Let me get this straight, it's storing computer data in a holographic picture? That doesn't sound very re-writable.

[Toasty]

No, it's storing data in a block of clear stuff. To record data, it creates an extremely small disruption in the block of stuff that will either block light or reflect it (depending on the recording method). Data can be recorded anywhere within that block. Up, down, left, right, foreward, or backward. In 3 dimensions. The way the data is recorded is fairly similar to holography.

Normal recording technology only records data on a 2D plane, makeing storage fairly limited in comparison.

The holodiscs work in a similar manner to the holodrives, with the exception that's it's a spinning disc and not a block of clear stuff. Like with CD's and DVD's, different substances will allow the discs to be write once or re-writeable.

[Split Infinity]

Not really, you can just make a bigger 2D plane. :/

[Toasty]

Let e rephrase then.

Holographic recording technology allows for much, much higher data densities than either dual-layer-dual-sided DVD's or Blu-ray.

3.9TB in the same size as a DVD

[Split Infinity]

Everything you've described up to now sounds exactly like a multi-layer disc.

[Toasty]

Yeah, it does, but a multilayer disc can't store data ANYWHERE in a 3D plane. only anywhere on a 2D plane.

It's like having as many layers as the the substance is thivk [in molecules]. Plus, a second layer in a multilayer disc has less data than the first layer. There is the same data capacity on the bottom of the disc as there is at the top of the data layer.

Basically, it's better than multilayered discs, because we can only get up to 4 layers ina disc as it is. Even if we could get more, a holodisc could still hold more data in the same amount of space because of it's design.

Go read the wiki article on it.

[Split Infinity]

Okay then, a disc with really thin layers... :/

Sounds like it would be incredibly prone to scratches.

[Toasty]

The thinness of the layers doesn't matter. It's about focusing the laser on those layers. You could have layers as thin as one molecule thick and holodiscs would still fit more data in the same space.

And yeah, they are. That's why they're protected by carts. It shouldn't be much longer before they come up with a useable clear-coating. Blu-ray discs were the same when they first debuted.

[Split Infinity]

If it's using light rays instead of infrared won't they just bounce off scratches?

[Toasty]

*facepalm*

they're both electromagnetic waves, split. They're both effected by scratches.

And infrared is gigantic compared to blue lasers.

[Zeypher]

I don't get all this tech stuff, but Holo storage >>>>>>>>>>>> everything else.