Hardware Autopsy
from it, but holographic drives promise speed,
too. With each fl ash of laser light, an SLM is
capable of producing a hologram containing
one million bits of data. Holographic drives use
lasers that are faster than the magnetic heads
currently used in hard drives, and they can
deliver data transfer rates in excess of 20MB
per second. Advocates of the technology claim
that 1GB/s transfer speeds are well within the
realm of possibility.
Holographic storage promises unheard
of capacity and staggering speed, so why
aren’t these drives dominating the storage
market right now? As is often the case, the
technology’s hype has been painfully slow to
coalesce into manufactured goods. It took
20 years from its conception for holography
to move into the storage arena; 40 additional
years passed before it moved out of the R&D
labs and into a commercial product.
The hurdles have been steep and numer-
ous. The composition of the recording material
was one of the most intractable problems:
Researchers had trouble concocting a formula
that was suffi ciently sensitive, stable enough
for long-term archiving, and inexpensive
enough for commercial use. Operational tem-
perature ranges were too limited, and fabricat-
ing lasers that were accurate enough to do the
job has been tricky. The SLMs and detectors
were prohibitively expensive, too, although this
last problem was eventually solved by using
LCD technology to produce SLMs and charge-
coupled devices (the CCDs used in digital
cameras) to serve as detector arrays.
InPhase Technologies is one of the most
notable players in today’s holographic-stor-
age market: The company was spun off from
Lucent Technologies in 2000 (Lucent itself is
a spin-off from the legendary Bell Labs), and
it shipped the fi rst holographic drive—the
Tapestry HDS-300R—in late 2006. InPhase’s
fi rst-generation Tapestry drive is capable of
burning 300GB of data—the equivalent of 460
CDs or 64 DVDs—to a single 5.25-inch disc at
a data rate of 20MB/s. This is WORM (write-
once, read many) technology; the company is
still working on a rewritable drive. It plans to
introduce 800GB discs with 80MB/s transfer
rates by 2008 and 1.6TB discs with 120MB/s
transfer rates by 2010.
But don’t whip out your checkbook just
yet. The Tapestry HDS-300R costs a cool
$15,000, while the Maxell discs needed to
feed the beast cost between $100 and $125
each. This is clearly an enterprise product,
and the fi rst customers will be organizations
needing to archive vast amounts of informa-
tion: Think government agencies, fi nancial
institutions, and media companies. It’ll be a
few years before consumers are tripping the
light holographic.r & d BREAKING DOWN TECH —PRESENT AND FUTURE
54 MAXIMUMPC APRIL 2007 APRIL 2007 MAXIMUMPC 55
White Paper: Holographic Storage
CASE Though it looks like a stan-
dard external optical drive cage,
Microsoft’s HD DVD drive features
a fairly unique design: The USB
controller is mounted directly on
the back of the drive.OPTICAL DRIVE
Toshiba’s SD-S802A
looks like a typical
internal 5.25-inch
optical drive, but
instead of a standard
IDE connector, it
sports a laptop IDE
connector, which
delivers both data and
power connectivity.GREEN PCB ON BACK OF DRIVE This
PCB hosts a 256MB Samsung flash memory
chip as well as a USB controller and IDE con-
troller. These chips convert the IDE signal pro-
duced by the drive into a USB signal, allowing
you to connect the drive to your PC or Xbox
using a simple USB cable.POWER SUPPLY Like many other consumer elec-
tronics devices, the HD DVD drive sports an open
power supply. If you take yours apart, be extremely
careful of the large capacitors, as they can hold a
charge even after the device is unplugged.Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive
We were shocked when Microsoft began selling its HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360
for just $200. We were even more shocked when we learned it works with Windows.
Our shock reached new plateaus of ludicrousness when we discovered that HD DVD
playback works. And, our shock reached previously unimaginable heights when we
cracked the case and saw the hardware’s unexpected design.Any requests? What hardware—new or old—would you like to see go under
Maximum PC’s autopsy knife? Email your suggestions to [email protected].Though it looks like a stan-
dard external optical drive cage,
Microsoft’s HD DVD drive features
a fairly unique design: The USB
controller is mounted directly on
the back of the drive.OPTICAL DRIVE
Toshiba’s SD-S802A
looks like a typical
internal 5.25-inch
optical drive, but
instead of a standard
IDE connector, it
sports a laptop IDE
connector, which
delivers both data and
power connectivity.GREEN PCB ON BACK OF DRIVE This
PCB hosts a 256MB Samsung flash memory
chip as well as a USB controller and IDE con-
troller. These chips convert the IDE signal pro-cracked the case and saw the hardware’s unexpected design.