Storage technology is now seen to be advancing, with consumers and companies seeing increasing choices, depending on their needs. Recently, a storage technology startup called HoloMem is seen to be looking to replace magnetic tape storage as a long-term storage option.
In short, this company wants to introduce storage that uses holographic ribbons to store more data, for longer periods of time. Charlie Gale, the founder of HoloMem, invented the security hologram sticker while working at Dyson, and now holds a patent for the technology.
This holographic feature was initially used to display a multiplex holographic QR code called HO1O which allowed two QR codes to be overlapped and used as a way to verify the authenticity of a product.
Interestingly, he also discovered that this holographic technology could be overlapped many times, allowing it to be used as a type of storage. And from there, the idea to establish HoloMem as a storage development company was born.
The advantage shown by storage technologies such as Cerabyte and Project Silica that use glass as a storage medium is that it requires high-power laser hardware, and has expensive development costs.
For HoloMem, although it technically requires light to write and read data, the light source required is something like infrared light which can already be produced cheaply.
The advantage of using this “holographic” storage is that it can not only store a large amount of data, but also has a longer data storage period compared to magnetic tape. Where magnetic tape storage can typically store about 18TB of data in a cartridge and last for 10 to several dozen years, HoloMem says their storage has the potential to store 200TB of data per cartridge with a lifespan of 50 years.
Another advantage shown by HoloMem’s offering is that their storage products will support existing storage technology, and business or data center owners do not need to upgrade their server machines to use this storage.
This technology is still being developed, and it is currently unknown when HoloMem storage will be introduced to the market.