GE Micro-holographic Discs Offer Up to 500 GB Storage

General Electric's holographic storage efforts are giving rise to an optical disc that can store up to 500 GB of data.

General Electric might be a company you think of when considering a home appliance—or a television network—but the company also does its fair share of technology research. Now, the company has unveiled a new micro-holographic optical disc technology that can accommodate up to 500 GB of data per disc—that’s the same capacity as about 100 standard DVDs. And although the company will first be pitching the technology as the electronic archiving industry, it may eventually make its way to consumers.

Micro-holographic technology stores data in three dimensions in a disc, rather than relying on reading and writing tiny pits on the surface of a disc layer. The result is increased capacity over standard optical media—but, potentially, backward compatibility with existing optical media. “The hardware and formats are so similar to current optical storage technology,” GE said in a statement, “that the micro-holographic players will enable consumers to play back their CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs.”

Micro-holographic discs are also seen as potentially being more reliable than traditional optical media. GE has recently made several improvements to materials that vastly increase the amount of light that can be reflected by the holograms, improving the technology’s performance and enabling the company to scale down the holograms to even smaller sizes.

There’s no work on any plans to bring holographic discs to consumer or even professional markets: GE will need to work with manufacturers and hardware developers to commercialize the technology. But the days when Blu-ray represents the upper end of the optical disc industry may be numbered.