Holographic data storage: science fiction or science fact?

To compete in the archive and backup industries, holographic data storage must be highly competitive in four critical areas: total cost of ownership (TCO), cost/TB, capacity/footprint, and transfer rate. New holographic technology advancements by Akonia Holographics have enabled the potential for ultra-high capacity holographic storage devices that are capable of world record bit densities of over 2-4Tbit/in², up to 200MB/s transfer rates, and media costs less than $10/TB in the next few years. Additional advantages include more than a 3x lower TCO than LTO, a 3.5x decrease in volumetric footprint, 30ms random access times, and 50 year archive life. At these bit densities, 4.5 Petabytes of uncompressed user data could be stored in a 19" rack system. A demonstration platform based on these new advances has been designed and built by Akonia to progressively demonstrate bit densities of 2Tb/in², 4Tb/in², and 8Tb/in² over the next year. Keywords: holographic