The table below gives some very general ranges of material parameters. We expect that 100,000 spectral locations can be achieved per spatial location. This is a very heavy level of spectral multiplexing. Since the spectral storage dimension can support so many independent channels, it becomes possible to store substantial amounts of data in a relatively small number of spatial locations. This is important because light beams can be repositioned by non-mechanical means to the small number of spatial locations.
Mechanical mechanisms used in familiar storage technologies are intrinsically slow.
The use of non-mechanical spatial access in spectral memories means that these memories can be very fast. Here we go with a technical issue. If one stores information in the spectral dimension, the carrier laser must tune rapidly enough so that successive bits occupy non-overlapping spectral channels. This is what a physicist new to the problem would probably conclude. If this conclusion is correct there is a problem, because high bandwidth data requires a great deal of bandwidth for each nonoverlapping bit.