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New Nanofab Tech Developed by UMass
Atomasoft Corporation writes: "The article available here point out a new tool in nanotechnology: 'Imagine being able to store 25 full-length, DVD-quality movies on a disc the size of a quarter. That amounts to a data storage density of about 1.2 trillion bits per square inch. A recent development by University of Massachusetts researchers may someday enable consumers to do just that. The research is detailed in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Science and is funded by a National Science Foundation "Partnership in Nanotechnology" grant, the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, and the U.S. Department of Energy.'"
Man, why did they have to say Movies, worse yet, DVD-quality Movies. I don't want to see the MPAA trying to stop this technology (or delay it like DVD-R). Why not say, for example, a tillrion uncopyrighted text files instead. Better yet, just the actual storage size would be fine.
Just how fast can information be written to or read from this new storage medium? For that matter, for how long can information be retained -- think DRAM. If it needs to be periodically refreshed, then how often? How about power consumption? How reliable is the storage? Would a random gamma ray fry a whole lot of those bits?
The posts I've seen here so far suggest people have been thinking along the lines of CD or DVD kinds of storage with near-permanent storage attributes.
Even using a fast CD drive, that could take quite a while for the data transfer and all the disk shuffling!
Then again, if it proves to have high data transfer rates and low power consumption, sign me up to be the first for data cartridges for a Visor and a digital camera!
Wow, and someday they'll invent a black hole generator, and someday they'll create a horrible plague, and someday they'll destabilize the sun and destroy the Earth, and someday....
Look, ignore nanobots for a second. Build me a robot of ANY size that survive and reproduce.
You can't. It will be a very VERY long time before anything like this happens. There's no watchdog because THERE'S NOTHING TO WATCH.
I'm beginning to suspect you're a troll. I've never seen any scientist come close to claiming a tech they've produced will 'cure all our ills'.
Ah well. Guess I'm just used to dealing with ignorance.
Later
ErikZ
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Basic science is the cutting-edge stuff. It's where you do stuff because it's interesting, it's totally new, and it's got maybe a one in 50 chance of leading to a new product. But sometimes, just sometimes, it gets you semiconductors, penicillin, and the theory of relativity. The timeline between such research beginning and products arriving on the shelves is typically a decade, sometimes generations. To use a contemporary computer-related example, research into nanocomputing and quantum computing falls into this category.
Applied research covers the majority of research done by companies (but not all - very large companies do a fair bit of pure research). This is often directed by companies who want to investigate things closely related to their existing products. It typically runs under shorter timelines of maybe 2 - 5 years between research and outcomes. Intel's work on say 0.07-micron processes would probably fall into this category.
Engineering is what happens when companies turn basic and applied research into products.
Now, while these are fairly rough categories (really they represent a continuum rather than strict definitions, and there is feedback in both directions) they are good to keep in mind when examining new developments. Criticising the latest product on the market for really just being a slight refinement on the last one is missing the point. Conversely, criticising this for being "vapourware" is equally silly. It may well take ten years to appear on the market. More likely, you'll never hear of this again. But then again, it might be the foundation of ultra-high-density storage for the computers of 2015.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
>You speak of the GM food scare and the BSE crisis like these are actual problems...
BSE IS a problem for the dozen or whatever people that have caught new type CJD in recent years.
Do some reading on BSE and the prions that are thought to cause it. It's pretty scary stuff, worthy of the radical containment measures that are being taken.
Wouldn't it be more useful to pursue optical storage mechanisms than magnetic? Isn't information density going to be best served by three-dimensional storage?
CDs are already a hnady size. Make things too small and they're harder to handle or get lost too easily. If you can fit 25 DVDs (4.7G [single sided] * 25 = 117.5 GB) onto the size of a quarter, then that same bit density on a 5.25 platter would give you 51 TB of data or 10,000 DVDs worth of data. Now that's a lof of blowfished w4r3z and pr0n that Evil Feds(tm) can't prosecute me for (no password == no evidence, password protected by 5th amendment). Bottom line? Don't make it any smaller, just make it hold more data.
I'm sorry, but I really am tired of /. posters crying "vaporware" at every news release that mentions groundbreaking technology. Yes, vaporware is abundant, but this article is about a new fabrication technique and the potential it could have for data storage. They're not giving it a catchy name, or a projected selling date, a ridiculous retail price, or any other marketing buzzwords. They aren't even talking about a product. This is a development in technology from academia, and should be treated as such. Please, save the vaporware accusations for the deserving.
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Yes, but it's 1.2 trillion bits of vaporware. The size of vaporware has radically increased over the years!
In your haste to blame the media, I think you overlook a bigger problem - that the vast majority of science today is corporate research with the sole purpose of making money for the company - the effects on people's lives who don't happen to shareholders is simply irrelevant.
:-)
:-)
It is undeniable that technology can be used harmfully and destructively, and when it is the tool of single-minded companies with bloody track records, there is a cause for unease that has nothing to do with a luddite aversion to technology.
It's how the technology is being used. Even with all the GM hysteria and warnings and cautions, BT corn still made its way into human food supplies. No big deal if, like me, you're not allergic to the stuff and it wasn't your livelyhood that got flushed down the tubes, and you're don't give a rats ass about people who do have extreme allergies but can lead relatively normal lives by avoiding the wrong products by checking the labels.
But at the very least, it indicates that there are "actual problems", and for many, it suggests that the problems are not being taken anywhere near seriously enough - and while you might hate to admit it, GM hysteria has played a huge role in tightening up safety precautions that were previously heading towards profit-motivated levels of an inadequacy that is only now becoming evident.
What is really holding scientific community back from its true potential is a market system where the only research guarenteed to get funding is research that will make $$$ in the forseeable future. When the aim of science is quick bucks, not knowledge, is when science is suffering for the selfishness and stupidity of the elite. And you, sir, although you may deny it most strenuosly, associate yourself with them most strongly in your words
Science should be for the people. If the people, in their supposed "stupidity" don't want something that you believe to be an increase in their standard of living, attempting to impose such change upon them because they are too ignorant or unwashed to know what is best for themselves, is itself an uneducated stance. History repeats.
And if you infer from this that I am anti-GM, then you haven't been listening
*Pepsi drops from machine*
"Whelp, I've got my drink and my movie, what could be better?"
*looks at machine, realizes that wasn't a quater*
Imagine being able to store 25 full-length, DVD-quality movies on a disc the size of a quarter. That amounts to a data storage density of about 1.2 trillion bits per square inch. A recent development by University of Massachusetts researchers may someday enable consumers to do just that.
Can you say "vaporware"?
-antipop
What do you mean "What's the point?" The point is, we must continue to go for higher densities, otherwise storage technology (one facet of it at least) would stagnent - and that is rarely a good thing. What if, several years ago, looked at a nice floppy disk and said "What's the point? We've got plenty of hard drive space already."? Would we today have the 70GB drives we have? No, I don't think so. The idea is not to look at technology and say it is good enough - the idea is to keep on pushing the envelope, testing the limites of the world as we know it, in hopes of constnatly making things better.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.