InPhase Technologies was a technology company developing

holographic storage Holographic data storage is a potential technology in the area of high-capacity data storage. While magnetic and optical data storage devices rely on individual bits being stored as distinct magnetic or optical changes on the surface of the recor ...

devices and media, based in Longmont, Colorado. InPhase was spun out from

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...

in 2000. Their technology promises multiple

terabyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

storage. In May 2008, the company first reader, tapestry 300r, offered customers a storage capacity of 300 GB, with transfer rates of 20 MB/s in read write mode. However, the company has failed several times to release the reader on-schedule after previously setting release dates of late 2006, and then February 2007. As a result of these delays, InPhase was forced to cut a number of its workforce; currently there is no release date for the drive and storage media visible. InPhase Technologies currently holds the record for "highest commercial data storage" by achieving 515

Gbit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented ...

per square inch of media.Holographic advance aids storage

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

. Most recently the company broke the 1 terabyte benchmark. In February 2008, InPhase Technologies was granted a joint

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

with video game company Nintendo for a

flexure A flexure is a flexible element (or combination of elements) engineered to be compliant in specific degrees of freedom. Flexures are a design feature used by design engineers (usually mechanical engineers) for providing adjustment or compliance ...

-based scanner for angle-based multiplexing in a holographic storage system. On March 16, 2010, Signal Lake Venture Capital acquired a majority equity stake in the remains of InPhase. In 2010, InPhase acquired digital holographic storage media manufacturing equipment from Hitachi Maxell in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

, Japan. In 2011, Signal Lake, on behalf of InPhase, acquired the assets of DSM AG in Westerstede, Germany, so InPhase has rights for designing, developing, manufacturing, and supporting digital libraries (autoloaders that can hold one disk drive and fifteen disks with a robot that moves media between slots and disk drives, or libraries that can hold four disk drives and up to two thousand one hundred forty disks) and a robot picker that moves media between slots and disk drives, to be bundled with sales of drives and media. On October 17, 2011, InPhase Technologies filed for

bankrupt Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

cy protection to reorganize under Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code. Much of the blame for InPhase's bankruptcy was placed on then CEO Nelson Diaz, who ignored the engineers' warning that the product was not ready for market, as well as, allegedly, taking on full pay while all other employees worked for minimum wage. All of the InPhase assets were sold at auction in March 2012. Akonia Holographics acquired the InPhase assets, including the critical equipment and know-how, and all of the intellectual property. Akonia Holographics, LLC was officially launched on August 10, 2012 after closing on a $10.8 million investment round. On August 30, 2018,

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

announced it was acquiring Akonia Holographics.

References

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External links

inphase-technologies.comakoniaholographics.com
Apple Inc. acquisitions Holographic data storage