After holographic comes protein-based storage?science, customer adventures, music, movies — by TDavid @ 12:57 pm PST
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Forget abut HD-DVD and Blu-Ray for now, imagine storing your entire collection on one piece of media. This has been the promise and allure of holographic storage, but there is another storage type that could be on the horizon beyond that.
Scientist Professor V Renugopalakrishna is working on a protein-based storage system:
The new protein-based DVD will have advantages over current optical storage devices such as the Blue-ray as well, because the information is stored in proteins that are only a few nanometres across.“The protein-based DVDs will be able to store at least 20 times more than the Blue-ray and eventually even up to 50,000 gigabytes (about 50 terabytes) of information. You can pack literally thousands and thousands of those proteins on a media like a DVD, a CD or a film or whatever,” he said.
This is all wishful thinking at this point so don’t get too excited but it is fascinating imagining the demise of hard drives. And web based storage? Who would bother if/when they could carry around their entire life on a DVD? Piracy alarmists will not be psyched, but I’m sure there will be advances in anti-piracy and DRM long before protein-based storage does or does not become a real world option.
And it looks like we’re going to have to live through at least two more iterations of storage technology (HD-DVD/Blu-Ray and then holographic) before getting anywhere near these types of massive storage options. Expensive future for those who repeatedly keep buying the same media on newer, faster, better formats.
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“protein-based” sures conjures up some sci-fi unintended consequences story-line ideas. A new Frankenstein’s monster, armed with the knowledge gained from all the world’s data. But would it despair of its ugliness and inhumanity? Or decide to right all of the world’s wrongs by wiping out imperfect humanity?
Comment by Sterling Camden — July 12, 2006 @ 7:03 pm PST
Time to feed the DVDs!
Comment by TDavid — July 12, 2006 @ 7:07 pm PST
[…] It seems silly to suggest HD-VMD has any chance, but compared against Blu-Ray and HD-DVD which aren’t exactly off to a disruptive start replacing — or even supplementing — DVD, almost anything is possible. I’m still going with DVD not being seriously threatened by any of the HD options available to date. Yes, the high and low end technophile crowd will continue to eat up HD, but we’re still a couple years away from the mainstream public en masse buying into a different physical format than DVDs. And I still think the replacement format will be something without moving parts and vastly more storage space like holographic or perhaps even protein based storage. […]
Pingback by As if two HD formats weren’t enough, a third wants to enter the ring » Make You Go Hmm — January 15, 2007 @ 2:36 pm PST