Other storage vendors have experimented with holographic techniques, which store data throughout a material as well as on its surface. Disk drive technology, while advancing rapidly, has always been a storage medium that relied on the surface of a spinning platter.
"For Internet applications alone, industry estimates are that storage needs are doubling every 100 days," said Nelson Diaz, president and chief executive of InPhase. The holographic approach not only allows for denser storage, if it can be manufactured successfully, but also allows faster data transfer rates, Diaz said. Data is stored and recalled in "page format," he said.
InPhase has received backing from venture capital firms Signal Lake, Madison Dearborn Partners and Newton Technology Partners. Imation is a corporate investor as well.
The holographic development work at Bell Labs was partially supported by The National Imagery and Mapping Agency. "Holography is a revolutionary storage technology that can provide dramatic advances in both capacity and speed, which are not possible with magnetic or conventional optical technologies," said Steve Ladwig, president of Imation's Storage and Information Management unit.
Diaz said his firm represented the right combination of people, technology and financial backing to make holographic storage a reality.
