BY

CHINMAYEE BAITHARU
REGD :0805209008
MCA(4TH SEMESTER)
WHAT’S THE NEW BUZZ
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 systems use
the volume to store data. It is based
on the principle of holography
WHAT IS HOLOGRAPHY?
Holography was invented in 1947 by
the Hungarian-British physicist Dennis
Gabor (1900-1979), who won a 1971
Nobel Prize for his invention.

 Holography is a technique of recording

patterns of light to produce three
dimensional object.
 COMPONENTS OF
HOLOGRAPHIC MEMORY
The holographic memory system is made
up of the following basic components:
Blue-green argon laser
Beam splitters to spilt the laser beam
Mirrors to direct the laser beams
LCD panel (spatial light modulator)
Lenses to focus the laser beams
Lithium-niobate crystal or photopolymer
Charge coupled device camera
RECORDING OF DATA IN
HDSS
RETRIEVAL OF DATA IN
HDSS
 DETAILS ABOUT CCD
 CCD is a 2-D array of thousands or millions of
tiny solar cells, each of which transforms the light
from one small portion of the image into
electrons. Next step is to read the value
(accumulated charge) of each cell in the image. In
a CCD device, the charge is actually transported
across the chip and read at one corner of the array.
An analog-to-digital converter turns each pixel's
value into a digital value. CCDs use a special
manufacturing process to create the ability to
transport charge across the chip without
distortion.
 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 1.s and 0.s.
 PAGE LEVEL PARITY
BITS
Once error-free data is recorded into a
hologram, methods which read data back out
of it need to be error free as well. Because
page data is in the form of a two
dimensional array, error correction needs
to take into account the extra dimension
of bits. When a page of data is written
to the holographic media, the page is
separated into smaller two dimensional
arrays. These sub sections are appended
with an additional row and column of bits.
MULTIPLEXING
TECHNIQUE
Unlike magnetic storage mechanisms
which store data on their surface,
holographic memories store information
throughout their whole volume.
Fortunately, the properties of
holograms provide a unique solution to
this dilemma.
This method of storing multiple pages
of data in the hologram is called
multiplexing.
 POSSIBLE
APPLICATIONS
One possible application is data mining. Data
mining is the process of finding patterns in
large amounts of data.

 Another possible application of holographic

memory is in petaflop computing. A petaflop is
a thousand trillion floating point operations
per second.

 Holographic memory can be used as extended DRAM

with 10ns access time,
 HOLOGRAPHIC MEMORY VS.
CONVENTIONAL STORAGE
DEVICES
Storage Medium Access Time Data Transfer Rate Storage Capacity

Holographic Memory 2.4 ϑs 10 GB/s 400 Mbits/cm2

Main Memory (RAM) 10 – 40 ns 5 MB/s 4.0 Mbits/cm2

Magnetic Disk 8.3 ms 5 – 20 MB/s 100 Mbits/cm2

 ADVANTAGES
In contrast to the currently available storage
strategies, holographic mass memory
simultaneously offers high data capacity and short
data access time
(Storage capacity of about1TB/cc
and data transfer rate of 1 billion bits/second)

Holographic data storage has the unique ability to

locate similar features stored within a crystal
instantly.
 ADVANTAGES(CONT)
Because the interference patterns are spread
uniformly throughout the
material, it endows holographic storage with
another useful
capability: high reliability.

No rotation of medium is required as in the case

of other storage
devices.
It can reduce threat of piracy since holograms
can’t be easily replicated.
 DISADVANTAGES
Manufacturing cost HDSS is very high.

And there is a lack of availability of

resources which are needed to produce
HDSS.

Writes in the same fashion can degrade

previous writes in the same region of the
medium.
The re-illuminated reference beam used
to retrieve the recorded information, also
excites the donor electrons and disturbs
the equilibrium of the space charge field
in a manner that produces a gradual
erasure of the recording.
 In the past, this has limited the number of
reads that can be made before the signal-
to -noise ratio becomes too low.
 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.
 REFERENCES
http://www.howstuffworks.com
http://www.sandj@cda.mrs.umn.edu
http://www.stanford.edu/~svngam/
Chipmagazine
PC Quest Magazine