Features - Storage Innovations:

InPhase DEVELOPS BLUE LASER HOLOGRAPHIC MEDIA

InPhase Technologies, a leader in holographic data storage media and systems, announced that it is has developed and is shipping the first blue laser holographic media that enables greater amounts of information to be stored on a single disc. The new media, Tapestry HDS5000, developed in part with funds from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), builds on InPhase's previous innovations in green wavelength holographic media. This breakthrough blue wavelength media will be used in holographic recorders and players that will have terabytes of capacity on a single disc.

The Tapestry HDS5000 media is available today for customer shipments. InPhase has been shipping holographic media to holographic device developers since 2001. Tapestry HDS5000 is photosensitive to blue laser wavelengths from 400-410 nanometers (nm). These lasers, developed for use in next-generation blue laser DVD devices, are being incorporated into InPhase's holographic systems, currently under development.

Blue media increases the data density over the earlier green versions due to the shorter wavelength. Earlier versions of the InPhase Tapestry product line, HDS1000, HDS2000 and HDS3000, use green lasers at 510-532nm. InPhase will continue to sell these media formulations.

"Tapestry HDS5000 is a breakthrough in the marketplace and will satisfy the insatiable demand for low-cost, high-performance, high-capacity data storage. This will help usher in an era of true all-in-one convergent devices that provide the performance and capacity of commercial products at consumer prices," said Nelson Diaz, CEO of InPhase Technologies.

The Tapestry HDS5000 media will be available through the InPhase Media Evaluation Program. The program is designed to accelerate the development of holographic storage products in a broad range of applications by making InPhase holographic media and development equipment available to a wide variety of product developers in the digital imaging market. The InPhase Media Evaluation Program includes optional on-site training at InPhase headquarters in Longmont, Colo., as well as consultation on holographic drive/device development and joint development activities.

In addition to HDS1000, 2000, 3000 and 5000 media formulations, InPhase also sells holographic media testers and drive development systems to many companies developing next-generation optical drive systems.

"While Blu-ray and other consumer technologies popularize the benefits of blue lasers, InPhase Technologies continues to demonstrate that holographic data storage can also take advantage of these new lasers and still offer much higher capacity and performance. Holographic storage has the potential to become an important next-generation optical storage technology, and InPhase Technologies has the resources and commitment to bring the technology to market in the near future," said Wolfgang Schlichting, research director of Removable Storage for IDC.

InPhase's Tapestry HDS-200R drive, the first-generation recordable holographic drive, will reach the market in 2006 and has 200 gigabytes of capacity with a 20 megabyte per second transfer rate. A single disc can hold almost 100 million pages of text, 200,000 photos, over 1,500 hours of audio, or 14 hours of high definition video.