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Gigabyte Matchbook Drives From IBM
A number of people wrote in about the New York Times article regarding IBM's new storage breakthrough. They've been working on their microdrives for some time now, and it appears to be paying off. 1 gig in something the size of a pack of matches. Cool.Update: 06/20 04:58 by H :Check out the press release from IBM, thanks to Asbestosrush.
It's often said that only small companies are innovative. The number and range of cool technologies that IBM (about as big as they get) are turning out, from IC to storage technology, seems to contradict this.
Come on, it's much easier to do s/www/www10/ instead:
http://www 10.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/06/biztech/articles /20blue.html
The hacking level on slashdot is amazingly low these days.
IBM triples capacity of world's smallest hard disk drive.
Halo Data Devices are introducing a 250Mb microdrive in a type I compact flash format. Small enough to fit in loads of devices, not least my trusty Psion 5.
How about some other uses...
But the killer app...
Build a system with this for storage, one of their nice low power, high integration PPC chips for CPU, and their `toothbrush' eye projector displays, ViaVoice for input (and a keyboard jack), add a wireless interface and linux.
They seem to have almost all of the pieces together now.
The last part of the article talks of a Tiqit Matchbox PC priced at $1,495. Imagine a matchbox sized MP3 player with 1 GB storage. The price might not be there, but the idea of 1 Gig of music stored in a space smaller than your wallet is quite attractive. Maybe the future of wearable computers is coming closer...
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
At this size you could make a laptop with a RAID array in it... that's what everyone needs. :)
BlackNova Traders
And that brings me to my point: it's wonderful that IBM has a microdrive like this, and it speaks volumes for miniaturization and where technology is headed. But what is the expected use for most people today? Not much. At $500, this is way out of range of all but a few consumers. (Heck, it would cost more than the TRGPro itself!) At present perhaps the best feature of the 1GB microdrive is to drive down the price of the 340MB microdrive so people can buy them instead.
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"the ability to withstand a 1500-G shock. That is equivalent to a drop from a normal office desk onto a medium-thickness carpet"
The shock is when it lands with a delta vee equal to its falling velocity (or more, if it bounces) in a very small space.
Actually, this is incorrect, and the space it falls in has nothing to do with the space it falls through (except for wind resistance). The large shock is created by the velocity coming to a stop or even reversing itself in a near-negligible time.
Assume for a moment that a disk fell one meter onto the ground and bounced a small distance back into the air. A one meter fall at 9.8 m/s/s would result in a final velocity of 4.427 m/s. Let's also assume that it bounces up into the air at a velocity of 1 m/s, resulting in a net change in velocity of 5.527 m/s. The final assumption is the amount of time the disk contacts the ground, so let's assume a conservative value of .001 seconds.
Acceleration is equal to velocity divided by time, so we take our 5.527 m/s net change in velocity and divide it by .001, our time. This results in a net change in acceleration of 5527 m/s/s due to the disk bouncing off of the ground. Dividing this by earth's acceleration, 9.8, results in the G-Force of the collision, which is 564 Gs.
As shown by this conservative estimate, great shock can result from small forces when exerted over a negligible time. A bounce of a hard object may take even less than a thousanth of a second to recoil upwards, which I would guess is where IBM Labs is getting thier figures.
Dave
To get around it, find a NYTimes partner. The easiest way is to go to Google and search for "link:partners.nytimes.com". Take the first one off the list, PressDemo. Go to their site and look at their links to partners.nytimes.com. Note that they are all of the form "http://partners.nytimes.com/somepathtosomestory?. html?Partner=PressDemo&RefId=YY1js4EFnnn n.FnBoj"
To get the story you want (i.e.library/tech/00/06/biztech/articles/20blue.ht ml) just substitute it in there. So, hit the link http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/06/biz tech/artic les/20blue.html?Partner=PressDemo&RefId=YY1js4EFnn nn.FnBoj anv voila.
Now, I won't defend this as being either convenient or ethical, but it works.
I can see the headlines now: Los Alamos Nuclear Secrets Flushed Down Toilet.
The Los Alamos Laboratory reported that two matchbook sized disk drives were lost. Investigators suspect an employee accidentally dropped them into a toilet...
(AP)--In the latest of a series of embarassing security breaches, officials at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory reported that two matchbook-sized hard drives were topped with peanut butter and eaten, allegedly by its newest employee, one H. Simpson. Sources quote Simpson as responding, "D'oh!"
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.