SBIR Phase I: Ultrafast Block Retrieval for Optical Storage

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is designed to develop an ultra-fast data retrieval method for multi-layered optical memory technology. The memory technology uses 3-D stacking of N paired chiral films with unique optical properties. The chiral stack can provide very high areal data storage densities of 100 Mb/cm 2 per layer with an equivalent volumetric density of 0.5 Tb/cm 3 . The data retrieval method uses image capture and pattern recognition techniques instead of the usual bit-by-bit read out technique to retrieve a large block of data in a single step. The proposed technique can retrieve 2NB bits per readout operation, where the block size B can be 100 MB or higher. Retrieval rates of more than6N Gb/s are feasible or 6 G/s for a single pair of films. The retrieval method utilizes massive parallelism and is readily achievable thanks to recent progress in digital signal processing and CMOS imager chip technologies. Phase I will demonstrate block readout from a pair of stacked chiral storage films (N=1) and will develop optimal data organization schemes for both block reading and writing. Phase II will develop, build and demonstrate prototypes. Phase III will develop product prototypes that lead to commercialization. The proposed data retrieval method provides orders-of-magnitude increases in throughput that will benefit all areas of computing performance. The improvements will benefit scientific, engineering, business and home computing, in addition to the military C3I.