Digital distribution may be the way of the future, but that won’t stop disc creating companies such as Storex Technologies from touting their Hyper CD technology. Hyper CD’s claim to fame is the lofty 1 petabyte (1,000,000 GB) storage capacity. Indeed, 1 PB is a ton of data and could prove rather useful in certain situations. But then you have the whole issue of it being another proprietary physical format.
So is Hyper CD worth holding our breath for?
The way Hyper CD hits those astronomically high storage capacities is by way of holographic storage technology. Basically, a combination of 40nm-sized signals, fluorescent photosensitive glass, and glass-ceramic discs with many many layers built in all work towards the 1 PB+ goal.
Upcoming plans to show off the extremely early prototype tech at the Optical Data Storage 2010 conference have gone on to be cancelled unfortunately, signalling to the technologies monumental road blocks in becoming mainstream.
But it begs the question: Aren’t physical formats dying? The simple answer is yes. No matter how revolutionary they claim to be, digital is going to take the cake at the end of the day. Still, that won’t deter such companies from trying to milk all they can from the long-in-the-tooth physical CD.
Hey, let ‘em try I say. It’s entertaining to watch a desperate industry fight for relevance. And yes I’ll admit, a 1PB disc is rather tantalizing.
