Fast and efficient searching of multimedia databases using holographic memory

With the ever-expanding size of multimedia databases it is important to seek new technologies that improve the performance of systems that manage these databases. One such technology is holographic memory which has some very interesting attributes such as massive parallelism, high speed, and content searching. A volume holographic database system (VHDS) serves as a building block for a postulated terabyte electro-optical computer architecture (EOCA). Data mining and image management applications are considered for the EOCA. Using the associative processing capabilities of the holographic memory a number of queries can be completed in a matter of seconds for the entire terabyte database. These queries could take hours on sequential computers. However, the state of the art in holographic memory lags far behind electronic computing and thus considerably more research and development must be performed before these systems can realize their vast potential.