Some of the claims being made in this article are a little farfetched, but it makes one think...

Scientists in memory advance

Audio data compression is a stopgap solution to get around current storage limitations. When you've got a 10.8 terabyte credit-card-sized storage device to hold your music, why bother compressing it?

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Tony Fabris

What I wonder is if there would still be a way to interface with existing technology, or if everything would have to be redesigned. Obviously, us empeg owners would love to have some way to connect to these new storage devices via the existing EIDE cables.

The article didn't mention anything about speed. This high level of compression is impressive, but how fast does it decompress? We discussed a technology a while back that basically created 3D storage space (ie: 100 layers in the dimensions of a CD), and claimed to maintain current speeds, and faster.

Nonetheless, I can't wait for the future!

DiGNAN

This high level of compression is impressive, but how fast does it decompress?

I got the impression that the storage capacity advances the article mentioned were separate from data compression. I was ignoring their comments about data compression because it was about lossless text compression and isn't relevant to storage of audio data.

But your question about read/write speed is an important one. I'd really like to see more details on these technologies. How do they work? What kind of power requirements do they have? Are they write-once or are they fully read/write? Do they have a limited lifespan? Etc.

What I wonder is if there would still be a way to interface with existing technology, or if everything would have to be redesigned.

Yeah, I'd love to see a little $50.00 credit card with an IDE plug on one end. Plug it in, and bang, you've got 10.8 terabytes.

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Tony Fabris

There is an article in the latest Popular Science magazine about a New York based company which has developed a multi-layered clear CD type of disk which will hold many GB's of info. It will use a tighly focused blue-green laser to read the data tracks, meaning that the parts where the laser is not focused, the light will shine right through the substrate, hence the multi-layered storage capability. It is a good read if anyone is interested.....John

Technoweenie
12 GB Blue / Red MK2

Yeah, they sounded like they wanted to assure everyone that the "price was likely drop". Honestly, who cares? To get that storage space now through HDD's would cost something like $32670*!

*based on pricewatch.com prices

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

Here's the one I was talking about. Same thing?

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

Anyone remember that show "Beyond 2000" that used to play on the Discovery channel here in the states? Damn i loved that show. This thread just reminded me of one of the features they had. They showed a clear crystal cube that was said to be a working prototype of 3d storage. It was read by two laser on seperate planes. They gave some insane figure about how much it could store and how many layers could be had with that type of scheme. I wonder what happened to that one.... Seems like a great way to go, why limit it to a horizontal layer when you could cube it and go nuts!


|| loren.cox || 080000446 ||

The OS side of things has some catching up to do.

When we got our 2 terabyte raid here we realised that we couldn't build partitions bigger than 1 terabyte under irix (even though it IS a 64-bit filesystem).

Sad thing is, even when you get your credit card with 15000+ cds on it uncompressed, someone will still want to put 10 times that in compressed form.

-D

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reg. #10798 - blue 40gig MK2 #764

Yep, that's the one, sounds good, doesn't it????

Technoweenie
12 GB Blue / Red MK2

"I'm Henry Tannenbaum..." beyone 2000 was a great show. i always loved watching that. they always had the coolest stuff on it.

jeremy

12 gig, green...

Basically what DVD does, then.

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

It is, only far more layers.

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

If I understand correctly, DVD has two layers and the laser simply refocuses to read each layer?

As data capacity increases, so does our need for it. I remember when I got my first computer with a 6gig hard drive. I thought there was going to be NO WAY I was ever going to need all that space.

If we get a device that can hold that much info, we will soon want to rip Super-CD albums or DVD-Audio. We will laugh at 2-channel, 44.1K, 16 bit sound the same way that laugh at analogue cassettes and Dolby-S.

So, we will still desire compression. I bet that using any device to store only audio will seem short sited too. We will want to store detailed maps, phone books, heck, I even see us having the ability to copy the entire internet while we sleep to our compuers...

12gig Mk. II BLUE
Detroit, MI USA
www.PfeifferBeer.com

I even see us having the ability to copy the entire internet while we sleep to our compuers...

Another reason that compression is still necessary: Even if we can solve storage limitations, we still have data transmission bandwidth limitations to overcome. The bandwidth problems will be solved at different times than the storage problems, so in the interim periods, we still need data compression.

Interesting application for the extra storage, though... super-caching in advance during idle time. There are already products which do this, it's just an interesting idea to do it on the terabyte scale. Wouldn't make the phone company happy, though, they've got capacity problems as it is.


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Tony Fabris