Companies and universities as far apart as Storage Technology Corp in Colorado, Stanford in California and Tamarack Systems Inc in Austin are working feverishly on holographic storage systems, but they may be wasting their time if a new company in Eugene, Oregon is to be believed. Called Templex Technology Corp, it claims to have all the patents on the concept and technology sewn up. The storage technique uses the natural properties of color to achieve what is claimed to be 100 times the capacity of conventional storage techniques, although only eight times – 8G-bits per square inch compared with 1G-bits for the best current magnetic disk recording density – has actually been achieved so far. In Templex’s system, an acousto-optic deflect or manipulates sound waves to move the data-writing light beam aimed at crystals doped with rare earth elements. As there are a million shades in laser light, each memory spot can potentially hold a Megabit of data, if the difference between very close light frequencies can be detected. The company is using an Yttrium Aluminium garnet crystal treated with Thulium ions which make up the actual storage spots. Templex describes the technique as four-dimensional holography or TASM temporally-accessed spectral multiplexing, and suggests that data can be accessed at 100,000 Terabits per square inch per second. Although storage is the primary focus, the firm also talks of the technique being used for optical switching and routing.
