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Massive Storage Advances

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand dept.

pra9ma writes: "Scientists from Keele University, in England, have suceeded creating a system that enables up to 10.8 terabytes of data to be stored in an area the size of a credit card, with no conventionally moving parts. This along with 3 other forms of memory which could revolutionize storage. The company said the system could be produced commercially within two years, and each unit should cost no more than $50 initially, with the price likely to drop later. " I'm unconvinced about their compression algorithm, but if it works, this is gonna be amazing.

5 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Always the size of a credit card by HomerJ · · Score: 5

    Why is it every piece of new tech is the size a a credit card? Can't be the size of a dollar bill? or what about a piece of sliced bread, considering all this new tech is the greatest thing since.

    I just want to know what every tech inventor's opbession is with everything being the size of a credit card. It's not like we are going to fit these in our wallets. "Sure Mr. Tanaka, I have my 20 terabyte database here in my wallet, care to swap?"

    I dunno, I just wish technology came in different sizes I guess.

    1. Re:Always the size of a credit card by Coward,+Anonymous · · Score: 5

      what about a piece of sliced bread

      The size of bread slices varies widely from region to region, this prevents multinational corporations from referring to their products as the size of a piece of sliced bread. Although ANSI created a sliced bread standard in 1986 and updated their standard in 1992 to account for the coarseness of pumpernickel, this is an American standard which prevents any companies wishing to sell their product outside of the United States from using it and unfortunately the ISO has been dragging their heels on forming a sliced bread standard, so until the day when we get the ISO sliced bread standard you can expect many more credit card sized comparisons.

  2. Wow this is GREAT! by joshv · · Score: 5

    Man, I am so glad that I read slashdot. Without slashdot I would have to sift through tons and tons of bullshit every day just to find the new and amazing technological advances of the age. But no, I read slashdot, so I can come here and find the best of the best, such as this dandy invention.

    Wow 10.8 TB on a credit card, wahooo! What will they think of next? How do I send them guys my money? I couldn't find any address or nothing, but those english 'blokes' sure look like they is gunna go far with this invention - specially that text compression thingy - pretty damned original if I do say so myself. And then that storage mechanism 'no conventional moving parts' - I can't imagine how they got those conventional parts to stop movin, sound like quite a trick.

    Anyway, don't you slashdot guys let the criticism get you down. I am with you. Don't listen to them naddering nabobs of negativism. They always persecute the dreamers!

    I am looking forward to your next 'Light speed limit possibily violated' post with anticipation.

    -josh

  3. Re:The compression algorithm... by stu72 · · Score: 5
    All right,

    lynx http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/13/024025 4&mode=nested&threshold=-1 > slash.txt

    (no -source option because this is Slashdot, and as we all know too well, the content is much more redundant than repeating html tags, much, much more redundant)

    shelf:~$ ls -l slash.*
    -rw-r--r-- 1 stu users 20394 Feb 12 21:09 slash.bz2
    -rw-r--r-- 1 stu users 23750 Feb 12 21:09 slash.gz
    -rw-r--r-- 1 stu users 93867 Feb 12 21:09 slash.txt
    shelf:~$

    This gives a ratio of 0.22. Surprisingly, if you feed the same page to bzip2, but at +2, the ratio increases to 0.27, implying that there is more entropy and thus, more information, in higher scoring posts, which of course, we know to be false :)

    Perhaps with this firm mathematical footing, /. can proceed to a new chapter in moderation - moderation by bzip2. Articles which receive high compression ratios are marked down automatically. Of course, this would make it possible to earn a lot of karma, simply by posting random garbage. oh wait..

  4. This is unbelievable! by Darkwraith · · Score: 5

    Here's a link from the university.It sounds like it's real to me.