[Not sure which forum this topic rightly belongs under - perhaps it doesn't belong at HTF at all yet. I'm initially placing it under Blu-ray / UHD and moderators can move it to another forum, or ditch it altogether as appropriate]
A new technology called 5D has been developed by scientists at Southampton University in the UK. Product has now been developed so it's well past whitepaper research theory.
5D involves digital storage into small glass discs. Enormous storage in fact - 360 terrabytes per disc - i.e. 360,000+ GB per disc... over 3000 times the capacity of a UHD Blu-ray disc.
The new product is mooted to have a multi-billion year lifespan at room temperature and stability up to 1000 degrees C; although how they test to support these claims is unclear as I haven't read the technical whitepapers.
This news excites me purely as a massive leap in technological advancement of digital storage and I'm eager to share it with my I.T. students next week. Dreaming of its potential application to home theatre has me drooling even more, though it'll be some time yet before we see any inroads in that direction. I can imagine that this might initially have greater impact in the archival and preservation of audio-visual content, before its application ever reaches the home user.
Another point of possible relevance to film buffs is that the developers of 5D are referring to the discs as "Superman Memory Crystal" - recalling the tiny glass discs that stored planet Krypton's vast historical repository that accompanied baby Superman in his spacecraft to Earth.
The article linked below provides more details and a brief clip of the disc-writing process, but with no details yet of the reader equipment used to retrieve the stored data.
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page
A new technology called 5D has been developed by scientists at Southampton University in the UK. Product has now been developed so it's well past whitepaper research theory.
5D involves digital storage into small glass discs. Enormous storage in fact - 360 terrabytes per disc - i.e. 360,000+ GB per disc... over 3000 times the capacity of a UHD Blu-ray disc.
The new product is mooted to have a multi-billion year lifespan at room temperature and stability up to 1000 degrees C; although how they test to support these claims is unclear as I haven't read the technical whitepapers.
This news excites me purely as a massive leap in technological advancement of digital storage and I'm eager to share it with my I.T. students next week. Dreaming of its potential application to home theatre has me drooling even more, though it'll be some time yet before we see any inroads in that direction. I can imagine that this might initially have greater impact in the archival and preservation of audio-visual content, before its application ever reaches the home user.
Another point of possible relevance to film buffs is that the developers of 5D are referring to the discs as "Superman Memory Crystal" - recalling the tiny glass discs that stored planet Krypton's vast historical repository that accompanied baby Superman in his spacecraft to Earth.
The article linked below provides more details and a brief clip of the disc-writing process, but with no details yet of the reader equipment used to retrieve the stored data.
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page
Last edited: