IBM Reinvents Punch Cards

grim_thing writes "I.B.M. scientists say they have created a data-storage technology that can store the equivalent of 200 CD-ROM's on a surface the size of a postage stamp. Writing in the current issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, researchers at I.B.M.'s laboratories in Zurich report that they have achieved a storage density of one trillion bits of data per square inch, about 25 times as great as current hard disks." Reuters also has a story.

Comments

Really?

[SuiteSisterMary]

I'd have thought that most of the optical media, such as CD-ROM, was the spirtual, if not linear, descendant of punch cards. Only difference is how many holes, the idea of spinning for faster access, and using a "las-er" instead of some form of mechanical armature.

Re:Really?

[gorilla]

Many, perhaps most, punch card & tape readers used optical methods, basically shining a light through the hole with a dector on the other side. Mechanical methods at high speed would be too prone to damaging the media.

Re:Really?

[SWTP]

It would need to be optical.

I remember RCA { when they were Radio Corp of America! } created a video disk system based on a touching stylus device. Only got about 30 plays and was a real pain in the neck. LD were superior and ate them up.

I remember IBM's punch card punch machines and readers. The jamming, ripping etc! No way! Not again! Esp a serice call of 180 dollars!

Re:Really?

[orkysoft]

I remember RCA { when they were Radio Corp of America! } created a video disk system based on a touching stylus device. Only got about 30 plays and was a real pain in the neck. LD were superior and ate them up.

Shh! Not too loud! The (RI|MP)A(A) might read it! ;-)

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is a "las-er" ? Since when has that been hyphenated? Dumb fuck.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The way you hyphenated that makes no sense at all. Clearly, for the Dr. Evil pronunciation, it's "la-ser."

Re:Really?

[Delphis]

Since Dr Evil said it that way in Austin Powers :) ... Humor, you know? :)

Re:Really?

[York the Mysterious]

I just picked up a pile of those at a garage sale, but no player. Jaws and Rocky and all kind of great movies. Like every big movie of the time on those things. Pretty funky lookin disks.

One potential security flaw. . .

[Limburgher]

What if one's data contains dimpled chads? How will those bits be counted?

Re:One potential security flaw. . .

[sphealey]

What if one's data contains dimpled chads? How will those bits be counted?

The funny thing is when I am done voting I always turn the card over and check for chads. After the Florida thing I mentioned this to my spouse, who gave me one of those "only someone like you would think of doing that". I finally realized it was a result of the many hours spent in front of an IBM 029 keypunch, followed by 4 hours waiting for the card deck to come back from the machine room. When one hanging chad can kill a day's work, you tend to check for such things. But I imagine the percentage of people with that experience is getting lower by the day.

sPh

Re:One potential security flaw. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as classified and unclassified chad. Even though I remember a co-worker being told to separate them once (he was newly assigned). He had been handed chad from both data cards (rectangular) and paper tape(circular).

Re:One potential security flaw. . .

[motardo]

It will be sent to court and all the Republican dimples will win the case, causing all Democratic dimples to be unreadable, causing massive data loss.

-motardo

Re:One potential security flaw. . .

[letxa2000]

When one hanging chad can kill a day's work, you tend to check for such things. But I imagine the percentage of people with that experience is getting lower by the day.

I never had to work with punch cards; I "came in" just as they were going out...

That said, I always have checked for chads on my voting cards as well. I don't think there is anything geeky about it, it's just logical. Just like making sure you fully fill-in the bubbles in a "scan-tron" test, obviously you make sure the chads are fully gone.

Those that mis-voted in FL have no-one to blame but themselves, even though the "in" thing is to blame anyone and everyone else rather than take responsibility.

Re:One potential security flaw. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember it like it was yesterday. And I remember the dreaded computer center hooligans, who thought it was hilarious to knock your card deck out of your hands and scatter it all over the floor. Thank gwad for card sorters...

In the end, I got even with them, since I am CS and they're just lowly IT weenies.

Re:One potential security flaw. . .

[Bush Pig]

A series of ugly experiences with punch-cards and FORTRAN VI turned me into a luddite for about 20 years.

Re:One potential security flaw. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

People throw rice at wedding party. I found chads are quite handy for the job. During early 80's I went to a relatives wedding ceremony. Weeks before that, when I was working in the computer room the idea suddenly came to mind. I actually located some rare red/green card and punch up every holes on the card to add more color to the batch

Re:One potential security flaw. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they get your lunch money too?

Interesting

[Wouters]

Yet will this be a good equivalent to the current storage methods available?

Re:Interesting

[leuk_he]

They just sold their Hard disk unit to hitachi. And a few days later they report a new storage format.

Makes you think...

Re:Interesting

[great throwdini]

[IBM] just sold their Hard disk unit to [H]itachi. And a few days later they report a new storage format. Makes you think.

I just opened the front door to my house. And a few seconds later it started to rain really, really hard.

Makes you think...

Re:Interesting

[jscribner]

It will definitely be different, and it's got some cool advantages. The announcement from IBM Research labs in Zurich talk about a data storage density 20 times that of today's best magnetic storage. Briefly, tiny V shaped heads make holes 10 nanometers wide in a plastic film - there are a number of interesting stats and potential applications described in the article, as well as some animations (1,2). The story is also reported in The NY Times and C|Net.

Re:Interesting

[leuk_he]

I saw just saw a new post on [S]lashdot with the chars [i]bm and [s]torage.

Then i posted a troll (10 other people made the same post) about [h]itachi.

Then i am the one that gets modded up.

Makes you think....

I DO NOT THINK ABOUT CAPS.

Re:Interesting

[sphealey]

[IBM] just sold their Hard disk unit to [H]itachi. And a few days later they report a new storage format. Makes you think.

I just opened the front door to my house. And a few seconds later it started to rain really, really hard.

You might want to take a class in game theory and business strategy. The difference between the first post and your counterexample is that IBM very definately has non-public knowledge about (a) the future prospects of hard drive technology (b) potential replacements for mechanical hard drives. Given IBM's need for continued growth, if they have a technology in house that they think has, say, a 33% chance of replacing hard drive, it would make perfect sense to sell the hard drive business for 20 billion and invest 6 billion in the new technology. A gamble, but with a potentially huge payoff.

sPh

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone wants to be a debunker these days. But is being a reflexive and shallow debunker and more productive than being simply gullible? Not really. Just different types of mindless behavior.

Re:Interesting

[great throwdini]

[I]s being a reflexive and shallow debunker and more productive than being simply gullible? Not really. Just different types of mindless behavior.

Absolutely. I predict that I put as much thought into my reply as did the original poster into his.

Re:Interesting

[markmoss]

They just sold their Hard disk unit to hitachi. And a few days later they report a new storage format.

But the new technology is 10 years from market - with maybe a 1% chance of actually getting to market.

Re:Interesting

[great throwdini]

The difference between the first post and your counterexample is that IBM very definately has non-public knowledge about (a) the future prospects of hard drive technology (b) potential replacements for mechanical hard drives.

I'll pass on the business theory for now. The likelihood that the original poster was engaging in something other than sophistic reasoning is about nil. IBM may possess the private knowledge to which you refer; I very much doubt the OP does.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. I predict that I put as much thought into my reply as did the original poster into his.

IBM is in the storage business. You aren't in the rain making business. The OP started on a logical premise, you did not.

Re:Interesting

[clunis]

Point taken, but you may want to take a quick refresher course in IBM history and corporate culture. To say "the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" does not even begin to capture it. Something like "the right hand doesn't know what the giant squid banana fish love Neptune" would be more like it.

Seriously, big blue is huge. I'd say there's little chance that the folks who shut down the hard drive division knew (or cared) that some branch of the research division were about to make an announcment like this.

Chances are they don't even know now.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was a veiled reference to Dylan. As in "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall."

Re:Interesting

[great throwdini]

You aren't in the rain making business. The OP started on a logical premise, you did not.

Please. leuk_he posted a self-admitted troll. I can only hope that you are he.

Re:Interesting

[SWTP]

The problem is that IBM hard drive just dont meet spec. Neither speed or life. Esp the mess on that one model that died very quickly.

Re:Interesting

[ar1550]

Putting brackets around the H in Hitachi is superfluous; the company is not in any way affiliated with [H]ard|OCP.

Re:Interesting

[RetroGeek]

I'd say there's little chance that the folks who shut down the hard drive division knew (or cared) that some branch of the research division

I think there was a very good chance that the "folks who shut down" know every bit of what IBM is doing. Branch managers do not shut down multi-billion dollar divisions.

This descision must have come form the very top, and they DO know what the research departments are doing.

Re:Interesting

[God! Awful]

Given IBM's need for continued growth, if they have a technology in house that they think has, say, a 33% chance of replacing hard drive, it would make perfect sense to sell the hard drive business for 20 billion and invest 6 billion in the new technology. A gamble, but with a potentially huge payoff

Well sure, in theory. If it's a good investment, they'll make it. However, I hope you're not insinuating that the numbers 20B, 6B and 33% have any mathematical relation to this decision because that would be ridiculous.

-a

Re:Interesting

[letxa2000]

But the new technology is 10 years from market - with maybe a 1% chance of actually getting to market.

Actually, according to CNN, "If IBM decides to manufacture millipede-based storage cards -- it has no current plans to do so -- the storage could begin replacing the current silicon-based flash memory cards in handheld computers and mobile phones by the end of 2005, Vettiger predicted.".

That blows me away. They supposedly have a techology that by 2005 could provide GBs of storage space for PDAs, laptops, and MP3 players. Your WATCH could be a PDA or an MP3 player. It presumably requires very little energy so you'd be able to listen to music (or whatever) for days, probably.

... And they're not planning to market it? WTF? Clue-by-four time.

Re:Interesting

[markmoss]

Maybe they have no idea how to get the cost under $50K...

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Na eventually HD's will hit a wall of speed vs heat vs the amount that magnetic coil can actually move around. They have also been shedding of parts of their hw busness to become more of a 'solutions provider'. You may have noticed the dumb comercials. They got hit HARD by comming up with some propriatary solutions to the pc. Not that the solutions were dumb. They took a major hit in the PC market when they tried that MCA stunt. They just wanted everyone to pay the IBM tax. No one wanted to. Took em a few years but they learned HW can cost a lot with very low margins. But if you sell someone a solution. They will keep coming back to you to tweak it. IBM is probably continuing research into these kinds of things but they just want to have the IBM tax for patents, plus a way to apply those patents.

Re:Interesting

[letxa2000]

Maybe they have no idea how to get the cost under $50K...

In which case they should just research a little more until they can... How much would've a Pentium IV system with 1GB of memory cost 40 years ago?

Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[ajs]

So, that would be 120Gb in the size of a postage stamp. Not bad. Even if it takes a long time to write and longer to read back, this could wipe out tape archival for most backup purposes!

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[ranulf]

Unless of course you loose it.

Still, you could always package it in a big box.

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[Andre060]

So, that would be 120Gb in the size of a postage stamp. Not bad. Even if it takes a long time to write and longer to read back, this could wipe out tape archival for most backup purposes!

I'm not so sure. One of the most important factors in backups (if not the most important) is Cost per megabyte of storage. The article does not talk about cost.. How easy will these devices be to mass produce? What will they cost?

Andre060

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were to "loose it", would it run amok on some sort of data storage rampage?

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[mobets]

Maybe it will just become the New Tape (tm). Just immagine the capacity of a whole tape cartridge of the stuff.

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[squidinkcalligraphy]

that would depend on the persistence of the data. if quantum events down on that level start screwing with the punch holes after a while, and u gradually lose tiny bits (pun intended) of data after a while, then it won't replace optical data storage

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[rmadmin]

What if it gets bent? With a high density like that, a crease down the middle, or even a curve in the paper(or other material) could mean losing a few gigs of backup. And what if some numbnutz licks it thinking its a stamp!?! OH NO!? erm.. ok, I'll shutup now.

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

So, that would be 120Gb in the size of a postage stamp.

How did you come up with that number? They said they can fit 200 CDs in the space of a postage stamp. That'd be 650MB x 200 = 130GB. 130GB sounds a lot better than 120Gb (or 15GB for the mathematically challenged).

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[8bahl]

You said, "wipe"...

Sorry, had to do it...

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[$rtbl_this]

Unless of course you loo[sic]se it.

This reminds me of a revelation I had a few years ago, after getting my first CD-ROM drive. I'd manage to misplace a CD containing a multimedia encyclopedia and eventually found it sitting on the floor under my desk. I realised then that never before in human history had it been possible to lose an entire 28 volume encyclopedia by dropping it behind a piece of furniture. Now that's what I call progress!

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[sckeener]

The article does not talk about cost.....What will they cost?

I have no idea about how much the private section will charge, but the government will charge $0.34 per postage stamp errr....hard drive.

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[cryptochrome]

The storage medium itself is just Plexiglass. It should be very cheap. However I would speculate that it would have to be encased somehow because if the surface was contaminated (by particulates or liquid) it would close the holes, which may raise the cost quite a bit. Indeed because of this the technology may be unsuitable for removable storage entirely, and can only be used when the medium and read/write heads are securely sealed together inside the case.

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[ajs]

Yes, thank you for the correction. Of course (and I think everyone got this on the first reading), I meant 120GBi, and yes I was rounding CDs to 600MBi, which isn't terribly fair, but there you have it.

Now, can we go back to discussing the actual media and not nit-picking this silliness?

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[Tower]

That'll be $0.37 at the end of the month...

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[tzanger]

if quantum events down on that level start screwing with the punch holes after a while, and u gradually lose tiny bits (pun intended) of data after a while, then it won't replace optical data storage

This happens on a daily basis with disk, tape and CD. The data is not written exactly as it comes; it's interleaved and written with wads of error correction codes attached. That is what makes your CD-ROM or hard drive or tape seem perfect.

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[juhaz]

Current hard drives need to be sealed too, and they are dirt cheap in case you havent noticed.

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[ncc74656]

Current hard drives need to be sealed too, and they are dirt cheap in case you havent noticed.

They aren't completely sealed...you typically have a few small holes in the case, with some sort of filter material behind them. This allows the pressure inside the drive to equalize with the pressure outside. With the much smaller feature size of the storage mentioned in the article, would this type of setup still be adequate? Probably not, unless there's a better filter material that can be used.

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[ErikTheRed]

$0.37 after this month. The bastards.

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[avsed]

Not only are they not completely sealed, but they can be operated successfully under normal conditions with the platters fully exposed! I tried this with an old 1GB WD drive the other day (cost: around $500 when I first got it 6 years ago) - no problem booting up from it, and extremely cool to watch the head zip big and forth whilst calibrating at power up time. Newer HDs are probably even more robust...

Dan

Re:Perhaps not a disk-replacement, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

huh huh huh huh yeah that was cooooooool

Wow

[jayhawk88]

Kind of cool, but does this mean I need to start stocking up on vacuumm tubes for the Pentium 5?

Re:Wow

[Warped-Reality]

Careful, the P5 may not like your 6L6 tubes and instead go for some EL34's.... Although they'll probably use 12ax7's

Re:Wow

[Conare]

Maybe

Re:Wow

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Yes, you do.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Those cheap bastards.

Re:Wow

[ncc74656]

Careful, the P5 may not like your 6L6 tubes and instead go for some EL34's.... Although they'll probably use 12ax7's

The P5s I have don't care much one way or the other. :-)

("P5" refers to a somewhat older processor than you think.)

Re:Wow

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Didn't I see somewhere that a (60MHz -- original) pentium made out of vacuum tubes (or valves, for you brits) would take up several football fields?

and just imagine...

[denttford]

just imagine, a Beowulf clus^H^H^H^H^H
err... nevermind.

80 columns?

[turgid]

So, is the data stored in blocks of 25 rows of 80 columns? This will be handy for FORTH systems without file systems, and FORTRAN IV,66 and 77 programmers.

Re:80 columns?

[mikeee]

Just remember to load them 9-edge-down.

Re:80 columns?

[Rupert]

Reminds me of the old joke:

IBM salesmen are buried face down, nine-edge leading.

Re:80 columns?

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't get it.

I dont understand this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every month or so we see new headlines about how you can stick the entire internet on a penny or something. This has been going on for about two years now. How come we don't ever see this on the market? This is great to hear and all, but this does nothing for shareholders until and actual product is released to the public. Where are the 10 terrabyte drives that are the size of my cellphone for $30 a pop?

Re:I dont understand this.

[wirelessbuzzers]

Just because someone creates a storage medium/method that will hold 10x as much data as a hard drive today, doesn't mean that they have the facilities to mass-produce it, and its drivers, quickly and cheaply enough to put them on the market yet. This is why the headlines always warn, this will take a couple of years to market.

Re:good news for Linux?

[bsDaemon]

Which is odd because we all know how much bigger and "badder" (cooler, not more not good) Notepad is than EMACS.

Maybe they don't care about HDD

[Cyclops]

They maintain projects like this one, yet they sold their hard disk drives division to another (Hitachi?).

Could this be yet another sign that HDD is not here for long?

Re:Maybe they don't care about HDD

[Anonymous Coward]

... yet another ...

Could you point out some of these other signs?

possible use...

[paradesign]

if its durable ernough (there are moving parts) i can see this being used by ther military since they would obviously last through an EMP blast. perfect for high density long term archiving. maybe we will all have on embeded in us and it wil contain our DNA table so in an emergency doctors can administrate gene therapy?

just thinkin

Re:possible use...

[Anonymous Coward]

the article mentioned the tips have to be heated to 4000 degrees and the polymer can be heated high enough to erase the dimples. I have no actual knowledge of the technology, but I suppose you could build a strong enough case and bury it under a ton of rocks for permanent storage. though if all the humans are dead and there's no electricity to power computers, it's pretty useless.

then again, if that were to ever happen, the data is useless anyways.

Re:possible use...

[TheCrunch]

"maybe we will all have on embeded in us and it wil contain our DNA table"

DNA embedded in our bodies?! What a novel idea.

But on topic, this development is cool. I look forward to having significant amounts of solid-state (well.. less moving parts) storage. It'll open the door for countless new computer applications. Digital voice recorders for example; ~90 days worth of audio in your pocket is very impressive.

How does this compare (density-wise) to holographic storage?

Re:possible use...

[American AC in Paris]

if its durable ernough (there are moving parts) i can see this being used by ther military since they would obviously last through an EMP blast. perfect for high density long term archiving.

...unlike optical media, which would obviously not last through...

Wait. Nevermind.

Somebody's been playing waaay too much Starcraft. The only way of generating an EMP Blast of any appreciable size or strength carries with it some other pesky side effects, as well. That, and if such an EMP blast is ever generated, well, it'll take us a while to lament the loss of long-term digital archives...

...but I guess it's little more than sticking my head in the sand by saying that The Terrorists (tm) will never get their hadns on EMP technology...after all, it only takes 100 energy units...

Re:possible use...

[darthBear]

Nuclear weapons are only one way to generate an EMP blast. Conventional explosives and even capacitor banks can also be used, albeit a less powerful signal but still an EMP.

Furthermore the weapon that would be used with the intent of generating an EMP would probably not be much more than 1kt. Locally the effects would be disasterous but the world kept going after an 11kt and 21kt bomb in 1945. In fact with modern building standards and the fact that the bomb would be detonated in the atmosphere it is possible that the physical damage on the ground would be quite slight.

That being said its still a nuke and hopefully they are never used again but I suspect that if they were the result of that one bomb would be less dire than you would have us believe.

Re:possible use...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. Current, lots of turns, explosive collapse of magnetic field. Ta-da ...
emp artillery

Re:possible use...

[qorkfiend]

even if the data storage medium survives an EMP blast (from a nuclear explosion or what have you) you will still need electric circuits to READ this data. so, it will be inaccessible until the circuits are rebuilt/replaced.

Re:possible use...

[markmoss]

4000 degrees. You somehow got an extra zero in there.

For reading, the tips are 570F (about 300C). Write and erase are higher temperatures. For comparison, ordinary solder begins to melt at about 180C. In other words, the polymer media could be heat damaged, but the chips would be falling off your electronics first.

Re:possible use...

[orkysoft]

Excellent ;-)

Re:possible use...

[dakoda]

Does this really have less moving parts though? as far i know, harddrives have maybe 3: the spindle, the voice coil, and maybe a solenoid for something. the article claimed it had thousands of arms, all moving by way of high temperatures (seems possibly high stress?).

in any event, it is a really cool development. perhaps the density could be further increased by varying the depth of the holes in the plastic (making it slower still, but maybe doubling the density). even with this, 90 days of audio seems insane =)

Re:possible use...

[geronimo87]

EMP was not an issue in 1945, since we had not invented solid state semiconductors yet.

Re:possible use...

[chuckw]

and it wil contain our DNA table

I think God has a case for prior art on that one...

Re:possible use...

[RegularFry]

Not only that. I remember some coverage about weaponry to be deployed in Kosovo - I can't remember of it actually was, or not, but the gist of the articles I read was this:
Take one large microwave valve.
Drop from an aircraft over a target (e.g. electricity substation)
Chuck enough power through said valve while it's pointing downwards to completely destroy it.
Ta-da! No more substation control systems.

The valves were, of course, designed to be efficiently one-shot, and I think the power actually came from a detonation (might have been a cap bank, though).
There's a link here to something similar, but I don't remember this as being the same thing.
By the way, from that link, does anyone here know what shape field would come out of an FCG? How directional would they be?

Re:possible use...

[Ralph Wiggam]

It's much lower tech than that. I was thinking of the weapons they used in 91 against Iraq that were basically strips of tin foil that shorted out exposed connections in power stations. Apparently, they started using a new version in Kosovo that uses graphite instead of foil to get better coverage of the electronics.

The source is here:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/docs99/9 90504-k osovo07.htm

The document also lists a very high tech counter-measure to these weapons...a roof.

-B

Re:possible use...

[RegularFry]

I remember those, too, but there were definitely EM pulse weapons being discussed. The area of effect was something on the order of a mile in diameter.

Re:possible use...

[some guy I know]

unlike optical media, which would obviously not last through...

Wait. Nevermind.

If you think that all optical media would survive an EMP, try putting a CD in a microwave.

Now i can stop using my ISAM and VSAM filesystems

[taya0001]

This will be very helpful. IBM finally got around to makeing something better

No wonder they're dumping the hard drive sector...

[Uttles]

Seriously... doesn't this announcement come at a strange time, when IBM plans to phase out it's IDE hard drives in the short term...

Great..

[sporty]

Just what we need.. no longer will our data be wiped due to EMP or head failures, but because some knucklehead wants to pick his teeth with a punchcard.
:)

Roughly same as hard disk

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this bit density roughly the same as that demonstrated in the lab for areal densities on hard disks? And with hard disks you can use both sides of the media. Also, by the time this technology comes out in a product, hard drive areal densities will likely have surpassed this. So unless this offers a speed advantage, increased reliability, a dramatic decrease in cost, or some other great benefit, why use it?

plausible cause for dumping HD business?

[f00zbll]

Since there isn't a whole lot of details about this technology and exactly when it will show up in store shelves, it's kind of hard to guess IBM's plans for this technology. How plausible is it that IBM has something totally knew to replace HD technology and this is just another related development. Whether this can/could/should/would replace HD is hard to say without real data, but it might provide a clue. IBM might have some other bleeding edge technology lined up for mass storage, which lead to the development of this product?

Re:plausible cause for dumping HD business?

[Agent_Eight]

Personally I'd like to know how the crystal holographic devices are doing. There were just so many really interesting properties of that particular technology.

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/st/projects/holograph y/
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010423S0113

It's still hard to say if this would replace HD's either. If it turns out to be a form of removable media, it would be cool to not just rent one movie on a cube but a whole genre of movies on a cube. Just have to wait an see.

plastic postage stamp disposable ram

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like a good idea but how long would the plastic last until it begins to break down because of repeated exposure to heat. That and the slower read time, maybe build it into a ring & use as a portable private encryption key?

Hrm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any projection on data loss due to hanging chads?

1TB == 100GB ?

[Anonymous Coward]

After six years of work the Zurich-based researchers say they can fit 1 terabit of data -- effectively the contents of a 100-gigabyte computer hard drive -- on a postage stamp-size piece of plastic.

Since when is 1TB==100GB?

Re:1TB == 100GB ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tbit of course

Re:1TB == 100GB ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn the difference between bit and byte.

Re:1TB == 100GB ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a third reply, just to confirm that you're really really stupid.

Re:1TB == 100GB ?

[Anonymous Coward]

read other reply...

still, 1TB == 125GB last time I checked...

Re:1TB == 100GB ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to tera-anything, who the fuck cares? 100GB, 125GB, whatever.

Re:1TB == 100GB ?

[Imperial Tacohead]

Yes, the journalist is stupid. Fine. But elsewhere in the article, it mentions 200 CDs of storage, which is 130GB. So there.

Re:1TB == 100GB ?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Dude, the article was 1T not 1T.

Re:1TB == 100GB ?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

crap. I need to learn to use preview.

That should have read

1Tb, not 1TB

200 CD-Roms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get that translated into a tandard measurement, like Library's of Congress?

Re:200 CD-Roms?

[oliverthered]

It's arround 2000 coppies of celien deions latest CD in MP3 format,

though you could manage 20000 if you chose to use a higer compression ration and achieve better listening quaulity. (at the expense of owning 20000 coppies!)

Re:200 CD-Roms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats about 7 football fields, or if you're English, about 24 double decker buses (Assuming, as always, 3 buses to the Eifiel Tower)

Re:200 CD-Roms?

[istartedi]

Well, we could translate it into Encyclopedia Brittanicas, but then nobody would tell you how much it costs.

(don't moderate this comment unless you've had an encounter with an EB salesman in pre-internet times. Something tells me their sales strategy is much more customer friendly now for obvious reasons).

Re:200 CD-Roms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Library's of Congress

So close, yet so far. Thank you for pluralizing the correct word, but what's that goddamned apostrophe doing there?!!

Libraries of Congress

Re:200 CD-Roms?

[bubbaD]

This spelling correction isn't offtopic, in fact it demonstrates the potential problems with such storage medium. As one poster joked "What if one's data contains dimpled chads? How will those bits be counted?" Imagine searching for data corruption or even spelling errors within 120Gb. Even if its the size of a postage stamp,if it takes a long time to write and longer to read back, its use would be very limited. Especially if the data in question were comments from /.ers

Re:200 CD-Roms?

[bsd-mon]

It's like Armageddon:

astrophysics guy: "the asteroid is" blah blah "kilometers" blah blah "tons"
billy bob: "it's the size of Texas, sir"

people can't deal with actual numbers. not that they really know how big Texas is, but they know it's big. n-football fields is (are?) my favorite frame of reference, the logic being "every Joe Six-pack knows how big a football field is"

Re:200 CD-Roms?

[Anonymous Coward]

besides that, I was the original poster and noticed it right after submitting, so I figured I would correct it myself before anyone else did :)

PLEASE DONT POST YAHOO LINKS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

get Reuters stories from elsewhere

[[campaign against pop-under advertising]]

Why is it that...

[gTsiros]

...the big blue relatively frequently comes up with reports/announces of various types of advanced technology regarding storage, yet they haven't shown an actual product for even one of these technologies? They are not even exceptionaly good on the HD market too (i don't bash them. i am just curious.)

Technology is all sweet and nice...but without a product :/

Re:Why is it that...

[afidel]

Because IBM develops the tech, patents it, then reaps the liscensing rewards. Rather than deal with the slim margins and relativly high problem rate of physical manufacture they sit back and let others take the risks and reap the liscensing dollars. IBM sees hardware as a way to sell software and services, they don't really want to manufacture anything, they want to liscense things, have support contracts on them, etc.

Re:Why is it that...

[bdeclerc]

You have IBM to thank for the current big big drives. They invented GMR (Giant MagnetoResistive heads), one of the things which allows current drives to reach densities far beyond what was possible a few years ago.

Also don't forget their microdrives, pretty bloody advanced stuff...

Many many other aspects of current HDD design come from IBM research.

It usually takes 5-10 years for such research to turn into commercial products, so don't hold your breath, but don't discount these discoveries because you can't see further than the present...

Re:Why is it that...

[LinuxHam]

yet they haven't shown an actual product for even one of these technologies

Ever heard of the 340MB and 1GB CompactFlash drives? I think that qualifies as an IBM-developed storage innovation that made it to market.

Re:Why is it that...

[Shdwdrgn]

Didn't IBM develop the technology behind multi-layer disks used on DVD's? I remember reading about the technology and thinking how great it would be to have up to 3 layers on each side of the platter... then suddenly there it was on the mass-market.

Re:good news for Linux?

[Kircle]

I think this represents a major boon for Linux fans around the world. One thing holding people back from "taking the plunge" is the huge number of CDs required to install Linux. IIRC, Mandrake is on 4 CDs while Red Hat is on 6 (!!!).

What about DVD's??? You forget that it's not so much the actual technology but rather the adoption by a large number of people that makes the difference. That being said, much more people have a CD-ROM drive than a DVD drive, and even less people have a DVD writer. This is why most Linux distros have stuck with the CD format.

Where are all the inovations?

[peterdaly]

I seems every couple of months one of these "new storage breakthrough" comes along. What happens to them? Where do they go? It seems like these things have yet to make it into consumer (or even "professional") technology. Have heard a lot about high density solid state storage, and stuff like that, yet I still have a platter spinning at 7200RPM next to my feet. Arn't we a little outdated by other technology standards using spinning pieces of metal to store our information, with no end in sight?

These things are cool, but they become science breakthroughs, not news for nerds...stuff that matters? Do breakthroughs like this really matter to us? I am asking this because I really don't know. Where have semi-recent "Breakthroughs" like this made it into consumer technology that you and I can buy today? Or next year?

-Pete

Re:Where are all the inovations?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

yet I still have a platter spinning at 7200RPM

And I'll bet that platter holds 15GB/side, mainly thanks to those innovations that never go anywhere. Besides, just because I can't buy it tomorrow doesn't mean I don't want to hear about it. If that's all you're after, you should be reading a product review site.

Re:Where are all the inovations?

[wirelessbuzzers]

there is always a lag between science breakthroughs and the product market. They have the technology to store this stuff, but not to mass-produce it or make it cheaply or have it pass 10khr reliability tests etc...

Re:Where are all the inovations?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do see what your saying about all these "new storage breakthroughs" and never seeing them. However, howmany of these "breakthroughs" are from little companies nobody has ever heard of and how many are from IBM? It seems to me that when IBM announces something like this, its something that can produce products within the next, say 10, years. A couple of examples would be that they came up with the process that allows copper, rather than aluminum, to be used in mass produced chips. Also, I believe it was IBM who came up the GMR heads or something like that that has allowed HD capacities to come as far as they have.
-Greg

Re:Where are all the inovations?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember, less than a decade ago, there was no such thing as flash memory. Now I have a little plastic coated ram chip, about the size of two postage stamps, that holds 128MB and, with ease, goes from camera to computer to a list of other devices I could get. I'm also looking at /. on my 17" LCD screen that takes up about 10% of the space my old CRT did and uses alot less power. I'm also putting a new 20gig hard drive in my Powerbook. And even though my Powerbook is a great machine, it seems outdated at only 2 years old. And kudos to the Wacom graphire tablet, an affordable solution to carpel tunnel syndrome.
Where are all the inovations?
Just look up any online computer retailer.

-Cowering Anonym

Re:Where are all the inovations?

[Brainchild]

I seems every couple of months one of these "new storage breakthrough" comes along. What happens to them? Where do they go?

Every time a new storage technology makes it to market, some bubble memory gets its wings.

Re:Where are all the inovations?

[Broccolist]

Actually, you are using a recent revolutionary storage breakthrough, the GMR effect, discovered around 1990. AFAIK, all drives with capacity >15gb use it.

It usually takes a decade for a radical new technology like this to develop enough to make it onto the consumer market. Similarly, I expect much of the new science we hear about today to have come to commercial fruition around 2010.

confused

[praktike]

how does this compare to their 1 gig cf microdrives? those seem to be even more space efficient....

Re:confused

[Anonymous Coward]

It has about 120 times the capacity, and it's smaller. Which part of that don't you understand?

Re:confused

[freeweed]

200 cd-roms is (roughly) 120Gb. On something smaller than a microdrive. Space-wise, you're talking over 100 times more efficient.

Re:confused

[praktike]

boy am i stupid. i thought i read "120MB" and therefore wasn't that impressed. now i'm psyched, but i do remember the article saying it was 1000 times slower than current hard discs.

A Day in the Life

[gcondon]

His holes are 10 nanometers ... and about 3 billion of them fit in a punch card hole

I read the news today, oh boy
4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancastershire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
I'd love to turn you on

Re:good news for Linux?

[Tim C]

You can install a fully-functional Mabdrake Linux 8.2 system off a single CD. The other 2 are for extra stuff that is not required for the system - eg a choice of mail clients, text editors, less commonly used window managers, etc. Most of the development packages (eg header files, etc - not gcc and other compilers) are also on the second and third CDs.

Whilst it is true that you can install Windows from a single CD, you don't get half as much as you do with a Linux distribution, even allowing for the (substantial) duplication of software.

As for the number of discs, if this really was a problem, I'm sure more distros would be offering a DVD option - the majority of new PCs these days come with DVD drvies, after all.

Cheers,

Tim

Re:No wonder they're dumping the hard drive sector

[Asprin]

Seriously... doesn't this announcement come at a strange time, when IBM plans to phase out it's IDE hard drives in the short term...

Think about it -- it may be that this is *why* the whole operation was sold off!

oops...

[alapalaya]

about 25 times as great as current hard disks

don't tell this to IBM, or they will drop the research project, along with the hard disk division.... !


(yeah, I know... the sig is wrong... so what?)

Re:oops...

[DJPsychoChild]

Don't know if you caught it or not, but they HAVE dropped the hard disk division.

Re:oops...

[Eccles]

(yeah, I know... the sig is wrong... so what?)

You could make it:
667 The creepy neighbor across the street from the Beast
or
667 The guy across the street from the Beast, who despite several complaints to the Homeowner's Association, still hasn't mowed his lawn to regulation height!
or...

Re:oops...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. Your sig is wrong. Please fix. Thx.

Re:oops...

[alapalaya]

If I had mod-points I would give you (3, Funny) :)

Re:oops...

[Anonymous Coward]

had a neighbor decide my lawn was not to the right 'height' Boy was he in for a shock when he decided mine needed mowing. I do not think anyone had ever bothered to tell the dude off before.

Re:oops...

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful Something might brea..*thud*

Re:oops...

[buck_wild]

Not a mistake. Check here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004Z46B/ qid=1023899280/sr=-3/ref=__3/104-1271638-2531934

Oops!

[Royster]

I'd hate to drop a deck of punch cards that size. You'd need a microscope to put them back in order.

Re:Oops!

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I'd hate to drop a deck of punch cards that size. You'd need a microscope to put them back in order.

Didn't you put numbers in columns 75-80?

Re:Oops!

[Royster]

Of course! My 6MLoC VS Basic program requires them!

I guess THAT'S why?!?!

[anonymousman77]

I suppose that's why they sold their harddrive interests to Hitachi! Who needs those old mechanical monsters when you've got this!?!?!?!

Imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just think, with this technology, you could store the entire Encylopedia Britannica on a postage stamp! I just ordered the complete Encyclopedia for my kids. Cost me a fortune!

Re:good news for Linux?

[Indras]

Actually, I only use two CDs to install Red Hat, not six. Sure, the professional version comes with six, but that is all the software you'll need to run any type of server you could want. Tons of text editors, multiple browsers, image editors (gimp, etc), office suites (staroffice), and lots and lots more, as well as source code for pretty much everything.

I don't know of any version of Windows that fits all of those utilities on one CD, or even six for that matter. You'll need CDs for Windows, MS Office (full version is four CDs by itself), a paint program like Photoshop (another CD), MS Exchange for e-mail, and so on and so forth.

Frankly, I think your comment is a bunch of FUD, especially when there are entire versions of Linux out there now that come on just one DVD-ROM. Pretty much every distro comes with a graphical installer, a text-based one, and options for FTP installs. And, you don't need a special version to do an "upgrade install" on an existing system, if you don't want to rewrite all your files with a "full install" (Microsoft likes to charge more for these features). It doesn't get more convenient than that.

GXP

[Jacer]

oh man that's an impressive storage capacity...can i use it more than 300 hours a month?

Re:GXP

[wirelessbuzzers]

with AOL, you can use it 1000 hours a month! errr... wait...

Measurements....

[southpolesammy]

Of course, being the loyal /.'ers that we are, I have to ask the question...

What is the storage density of this new technology in Libraries of Congress/hectare? :-P

Re:Measurements....

[jolshefsky]

Assuming James S. Huggins' How Much Data Is That? is right with 1 Library of Congress print collection == 10 TB, and using the 1 trillion bits(10^12 I assume) per square inch, I guess 17.6 x 10^7 Libraries of Congress/hectare.

Re:Measurements....

[ckaminski]

The measurement of Libraries of Congress/hectare is getting less and less useful. Since the Library of Congress does store audio information, and the number of bits on a phonograph can fluctuate greatly... I mean, we've been measuring data in LoC's since the early 80's. Surely the LoC has much more data now than in the far forgotten past?

Isn't it better to measure in #of pages of single spaced text in feet? I.e. : That disk can hold enough data to store a stack of paper 300' tall printed with nothing but ones and zeros. But then we get into arguments about how thick the paper is...

:-/

Hmm...

Re:Measurements....

[Morphine007]

fuck it... why don't we put it in terms that EVERY geek can understand ;)

This technology is so advanced it would hold two-hundred-THOUSAND copies of every porno Jenna Jameson has ever made!!!

reliability of millipede?

[bbc22405]

So, there's a thousand red-hot pokers, melting a trillion holes in a square of plexiglass. Each poker will make a half billion holes just filling up the chip the first time. Eeek! I assume these chips will come with plenty of error detection/correction, so that if one of the pokers quits, the remaining ones will give you the clues to what was in that 0.1% that you just lost.

But certainly, there must be some sort of failure rate for each poker, and the chip... Is it too soon to know/guess these numbers?

Re:reliability of millipede?

[Drizzten]

From the article:

The Millipede chip consists of a layer of plexiglass a couple of billionths of an inch thick laid on a silicon chip. To write a bit of data, a microscope tip, heated to 750 degrees Fahrenheit, softens the plexiglass and dents it.

To read data, the tip is heated to 570 degrees -- not hot enough to deform the plexiglass -- and pulled across the surface. When it falls into a dent, the tip cools because more surface area is in contact with the cooler plexiglass. That temperature drop reduces its electrical resistance, which can be easily measured.

To erase data, a hot tip is passed over the dent, causing it to pop up.

Those are pretty high temperatures. Might they affect reliability in the long run? Also, what about the actual lifetime of the plexiglass material they're heating up? How many times can it take the read/write/read/write process? Still, it's a nifty idea. Kudos to IBM.

Re:reliability of millipede?

[bbc22405]

Heeeeey, waitaminute, maybe this technology really IS like punch cards. With punch cards, one of the "bad things" you could do was make a "lace card", by punching all the holes out of a card.

But, darn, I suppose that low-level controls in the device would prevent the millipede from punching every hole, making a "lace chip" as it were, much in the same way that magnetic encodings on platters and tapes require that there not be too many ones, nor too many zeros, all in a row.

Re:reliability of millipede?

[ynohoo]

From the article:

To erase data, a hot tip is passed over the dent, causing it to pop up:

from the IBM Research Site:

To over-write data, the tip makes a series of offset pits that overlap so closely their edges fill in the old pits, effectively erasing the unwanted data. More than 100,000 write/over-write cycles have demonstrated the re-write capability of this concept.

*sarcasm* Has Jon Katz started writing for the NYT?

Re:reliability of millipede?

[Anonymous Coward]

the memory piece will also need a pretty inventive way of cooling, if left uncooled it will all melt, if too cold it won't be able to write or erase anything, and every bit will be read as a dint.

Re:reliability of millipede?

[mindstrm]

Of COURSE it will.

Do you think your hard drive stores bits raw? Heck no, there is an error correcting scheme in place at a low level.

Re:reliability of millipede?

[bbc22405]

Yeah, I knew it would need error correction when I wrote that; I was sort of "thinking out loud". Yes, I am aware that current storage technologies use error detection and correction. But one of the interesting things is I think the perhaps different failure mode, when one of the "pokers" fails, taking out 0.1% of the raw bits at once.
Do hard drives fail in this way? I assume that they have only the catastrophic failure (head crash, fried electronics, ...) and the slow bit rot failure (single bits or blocks rendered unusable. Do they often also loose a (eg) single cylinder all at once?

Plus, it seems to me that a failing poker is not inconceivable. Each one has to make sooooo many holes.

Re:reliability of millipede?

[mindstrm]

Yeah.. but a single parity bit could account for a failing poker (provided you knew which poker failed)
There are all kinds of error correcting codes that could be used so even multiple poker failure would be detected.

The ecc built into disk drives is not for head crashes and fried electronics.. it's in case a single bit is read wrong. Could be a cosmic ray flipped it.

To lose a cylinder at once woudl require all heads to crash at once for a complete revolution. Unlikely.

Really, ecc is designed for correcting single bit errors.

more IBM HD feats.

[MarvinMouse]

Personally, I am more interested in this little gem that IBM is working on. I think it has considerably more potential:

http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkre se arch.nsf/pages/storage297.html#one

That page also has info on other projects IBM has been doing on HD research.

Re:more IBM HD feats.

[UCRowerG]

Moderators:

How is the above post offtopic? The URL in its parent really does not work -- you get IBM's error page.

Re:more IBM HD feats.

[Anonymous Coward]

because this board likes to present things in semi random order it seems...

Yes, but the drive is the size of a house.

[Snart Barfunz]

Which means the Sims can move into your computer for real!

I can hear it now ...

[Jucius Maximus]

Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen are crying ...

Too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM is/has bailed on the harddrive industry. Maybe one (all) of the other drive manufacturers will be able to license this technology.

IBM Zurich website

[Anonymous Coward]

the IBM Zurich lab website has more info: Millipede home page

Feeping Creatureism

[awx]

It's very nice that they keep inventing all these new technologies, but when are they actually going to build one into a product? We've been hearing about Holographic storage since about 1994 now, they keep achieving higher and higher amounts of storage space - but never releasing a product.

I'd rather hold 200Gb in my hand now then wait for 200Tb to be developed (and subsequently never released).

Re:Feeping Creatureism

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that the problem with holographic storage is similar to the joke about the dick tracey watch with TV, phone, fax, etc, etc, etc.

... and 2 suitcase sized batteries you have to carry with it.

Please, please please let me be wrong, but a sugar-cube sized storage device is not going to fly if the laser assembly which reads it is half the size of a house and needs recalibrating every time a mouse farts within 20 feet.

Alphabet Soup Nazi

[BenBenBen]

The equivalent of 20 CD-ROM's what?

Re:No wonder they're dumping the hard drive sector

[Cletus the yokel]

Seriously... doesn't this announcement come at a strange time, when IBM plans to phase out it's IDE hard drives in the short term...

Yup... I don't think IBM would've given up 40 years of technical leadership in hard-drive technology if it hadn't already seen the writing on the wall. In the short term, hard drives have become a commodity business and it's been harder and harder for IBM (and others) to squeeze a profit from the business. Long term, hard drives are a buggy-whip business - a technological dead-end. That's why IBM has poured so much money into basic research on quantum devices and molectronics.

Punchcards, Mainfraims and Tubes Oh my!

[jellomizer]

Does this mean that the people who are running these old systems can finally upgrade?

Re:Punchcards, Mainfraims and Tubes Oh my!

[SWTP]

Last week it was tube for finals on a motherboard. This week its punchcards. I shudder about next week!

IBM R&D is full of surprises...

[Throatwarbler Mangro]

In a related press release from IBM's R&D department, researchers for Big Blue have announced the successor to IBM's mainframe line.

"We'll be phasing out our AS/400 line in favor of the mother of all Big Iron," quoted one researcher.

IBM expects the greatest benefit will come to those using Codeweaver and, surprisingly, certain gamers.

Re:IBM R&D is full of surprises...

[Anonymous Coward]

AS/400s are *not* big mainframes. They are more like Sun servers.

IBMs position in the storage industry

[FullClip]

Hm, makes you wonder.

IBM sells their harddisk business to Hitachi, but apparently they keep their excellent R&D stuff in the storage area up.

Some strategic moves on here. I wonder what kind of corporate plan they have. Focus on consultancy and R&D probably, not manufacturing (expcept their mainframes).

Re:IBMs position in the storage industry

[CrayzyJ]

40% of IBM's revenue comes for Global Services. The other 60% comes from IP licensing, PC & server sales, and chip manufacturing (for Nintendo, Cisco, etc). So manufacturing is still a large part of their corporate plan.

Their Research in storage is a seperate entity than the HDD division, so yes they kept that part and just sold off the manufacturing plant.

Flock of Birds Technology

[Alien54]

Millipede still suffers a big drawback of mechanical systems. Reading and writing data with a single silicon tip takes about 1,000 times as long as with hard disks. To compensate, a second prototype chip uses 1,024 silicon tips to read and write data in parallel, bobbing up and down like a flock of birds pecking at dirt over a square area about a tenth of an inch wide.

Why does this sound like the Google Page Ranking System based on Pigeon Technology?

I don't know, there may be some prior art here.

so what are the pratical application

[Anonymous Coward]

let me guess trillion times faster than hard disk..sounds a bit fishy to me. What would be the practical applications. Faster computing time?

-"jisms are best served when people lest expected it" Over heard in E IRC channel..just tell them Kainx sent you...

IBM's latest moves...

[Diabolical]

Are easily explained by this tidbit of news.

Of course alot of people will be making jokes about punchcard technology. However, this technologie might solve the problems current drive manufacturers are facing. As the article states this might be a technology on the turning point of current mass storage. The similarity between punchcards and this product are only the use of "holes".

This could be the breakthrough for data storage.

hehe

[dmarien]

wiped due to EMP...

I *hate* it when that happens.

Standards and Interface

[Wire Tap]

I am entirely for replacing traditional storage devices. Hard drives contain moving parts, and that usually lends itself to failure more often than solid state devices. The thing I have a hard time imagining at this point in the game is a standard of interface for the new devices.

Right now we have plenty of good storage media in the market: Flash Cards, Sandisk, etc.. and gobs of neat things in the prototype/research stage: this "postage stamp" card, holographic storage, and if you remember a while ago there was the physicist at U Michigan who was fooling with the idea of encoding an infinite amount of data on a single electron. The problem is standardized interface.

Proprietary interfaces won't be very easy for the market to utilize. We like hard drives because our motherboards come with the proper interface to read/write the data to the disk. What if we ended up with all these cool new devices, but didn't have a standard of interface? Simple: they would not catch on, money would dry up, and the technology would still be in a rut.

Let's hope someone addresses this issue.

Re:Standards and Interface

[orkysoft]

Well, both harddrives and CDROM units come with IDE and SCSI interfaces.

Re:Standards and Interface

[Brainchild]

I am entirely for replacing traditional storage devices. Hard drives contain moving parts, and that usually lends itself to failure more often than solid state devices.

If you had read the article, you would know that these new nano-punchcards also need moving parts in order to work. Heat the "phonograph arm" to 400C, it bends enough to write the plastic. Heat to to 300C, it bends only enough to read resistance differences. Imagine the thermal stress involved....

Re:Standards and Interface

[Wire Tap]

And those are two widely accepted standards. That's _why_ the products are marketable.

Re:Standards and Interface

[orkysoft]

Exactly. That's why e.g. some Zip drives come with IDE interfaces.

1984...

[StupidKatz]

1984: Wow! Twenty megabytes! I'll never use all this space!
1988: Wow! Eighty megabytes! I'll never use all this space!
1994: Wow! A gigabyte! I'll never use all this space!
1999: Uh, wow. Twenty gigabytes? I don't think I'll ever use all this space.
2002: A hundred and twenty gigs? I... hm.
2005: ... Ah, screw it.

Re:1984...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. I haven't even filled my 10 gig I bought 3 years ago.. speak for yourself. Drives don't get filled unless you throw bloated apps on them (or pirate tons of meaningless shit). And when a 10 gig drive gets filled you CLEAN IT UP! Probably a good 40% of it is trash.

Re:1984...

[Anonymous Coward]

Drives don't get filled unless you throw bloated apps on them (or pirate tons of meaningless shit). And when a 10 gig drive gets filled you CLEAN IT UP!

Unless you do video editing. If you're making a movie with your PC you need lots of disk space. I'm not talking about Hollywood here. I'm referring to home movies and vacation videos.

Personally I "pirate" the mp3's so I need tons of disk space. I used to burn everything off to CD, but when I got 10+ CD's it became easier to just load it all back to the HD instead of changing the CD every song or ten.

So, just because you don't need any more than 10GB doesn't mean that everyone else can get by with that.

Re:1984...

[aronc]

Drives don't get filled unless you throw bloated apps on them (or pirate tons of meaningless shit).

Speak for yourself. Between myself and my wife we have over 500 CDs we are in the process of putting onto my computer. Beyond even the "I can so I want to" reason my wife is blind and as such it is a LOT easier for her to mess with files and playlists than to hunt for CDs.

Re:1984...

[wings]

1984: Wow! Twenty megabytes! I'll never use all this space!
1988: Wow! Eighty megabytes! I'll never use all this space!
1994: Wow! A gigabyte! I'll never use all this space!
1999: Uh, wow. Twenty gigabytes? I don't think I'll ever use all this space.
2002: A hundred and twenty gigs? I... hm.
2005: ... Ah, screw it.

How about...
2002: A hundred and twenty gigs. I wonder how soon before I'll have to upgrade again...

Re:1984...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're obviously not much of a computer geek and probably don't consider the computer to be a hobby/entertainment device. I need lots of space. I have several gigs worth of games installed. I don't consider them to be bloated. I have many gigs of pirated MP3s. I have even more gigs of pr0n (tho much of that has been burned to CDs to free up space). So, with the 56 gigs of HD space that I have, I'm down to about 6 gigs free. I need a new HD now.

Re:1984...

[Anonymous Coward]

Drives don't get filled unless you throw bloated apps on them (or pirate tons of meaningless shit).

Wrong. Multimedia.

Re:1984...

[kesuki]

I presently have around 185 gigs worth of files lying around, on my various systems. True, the largest capacity of any single system is 110 gigs, but I find that there will always be a way to fill up a hard drive. For instance I presently have 6 DVDs worth DeCSSed to HD for network playback, because I hate scratching optical media, and i hate the quality loss of an mpeg-4 conversion. Noone on the internet is trading .vob files, but then i'm not interested in pirating them, just in preserving my investment. so frankly if you could get a 10 terrabyte drive at an affordable price, I'd be in line to get one. Based on the evolution of drive technology, I shoudn't have to wait more than 6-7 years for a 100 fold increase in size either. By then, maaybe mpeg-21 will be standard, and have good quality/bitrates.

Re:1984...

[buck_wild]

Aparently you don't use your computer as a TIVO-like device. I'll take whatever storage I can get!

Permanent storage?

[Cesaro]

This might be just what is need to get permanent storage. The life expectency of most media we have around today is fairly short in terms of it's overall data rentention capabilities.

Taking these storage units, mounting them on something sturdy and sealing them in a vacuum container to prevent corrosion or breakdown and now the life of your data is incredibly longer.

You're using them right now

[Kris Warkentin]

How short do you think the life cycle is on these things? You're looking at a minimum of 5 to 10 years for most lab findings to make it to market. And don't forget, the all-mighty economy comes into play too. If it can't be produced cheaply enough in large enough quantities, it just becomes, "research results upon which other research is based on"

The toys you're using now are the result of announcements made a long time ago. It's just that our memories are short. I remember many years ago when WORM drives first came out - ooh...1GB of storage - so what if you can only write it once, you'll never run out of that much space, *drool* *slaver*... Now I have a desk covered in CD's, half of which are from AOL...

One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[vrassoc]

1,000,000,000,000 bits (is that a trillion?)
~125,000,000,000 bytes
~122,070,312 kilobytes
~119,209 megabytes
~116 gigabytes

Why didn't they just say so?

Last time I checked the smallest new hard disk I could get was 20Gb, i.e. 25 hard disks = 500 gigabytes.

Oh wait, now I see why they didn't just say so... 25 times sounds so much more impressive than almost 6 times ...

Re:One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed the "per square inch" bit.

Re:One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[vrassoc]

So I did.

Silly me.

I'm going to bed now.

PS: All those fscking calculations for nothing.

Re:One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[ThaReetLad]

umm thats 116Gb per square inch

for comparison the GXP 120 has a maximum density of 29.7 Gigabits per square inch

29,700,000,000 bits
~3,712,500,000 bytes
~3,625,488 Kb
~3,540 Mb
~3.45 Gb per square inch

116/3.45 is 33 times greater than the density of a GXP 120.

Re:One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[SmittyTheBold]

Need I remind you that GB and Gb are separate things?

If one is 116Gb/in^2 and the other is 29.7Gb/in^2, they will still keep the same ratios when converted to GB/in^2.

Re:One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[ThaReetLad]

Yeah I know that. The reason I spelt it out was to show the original poster how dumb he was.

Interestingly a drive with this tech with the same number of platters as the GXP 120 would have a capacity of nearly 4 Tb. Fill that.

Re:One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[ThaReetLad]

Just one more quick thing. One was 116 GigaBYTES in^-2 and the other was 29.7 Giga BITS in^-2 which is 3.45 GigaBYTES in^-2 so the ratio of 116/3.45 GigaBytes is the same as (1 Trillion bits ^-2)/ (29.7 Billion bits in^-2)

Re:One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[SmittyTheBold]

The problem being you wrote all your figures as "Gb" while some of them should have been written as "GB." I was pointing out your typo, basically, but I was not sure of the original figures, so I phrased my comment that way.

Re:One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[SmittyTheBold]

I would not want to use this as a boot drive for what I'm assuming would be serious speed issues...but dang if that couldn't be a great audio/video-storage drive ;)

Re:One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[ThaReetLad]

Every time I meant Gigabytes I wrote Gb. OK I should have said GB. As I understand it the accepted version for bits is Gbits however in fact Giga is the wrong prefix. Giga means 10^9 so in fact we should be talking about mebibytes and gibibytes (2^20 and 2^30) with symbols MiB and GiB. Actually hard drive tend to use the power of ten prefixes when talking about drive capacity, whereas OS's tend to use powers of 2 which is why your formatted size is so much less once you boot up.

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

It all depends about how pedantic you want to be.

As for speed, don't forget that if the data density is 33 times greater than a GXP 120, so will be the maximum data transfer rate. Imagine being able to get a sustained data transfer rate of 1.65 GiB per second. It'd be my boot drive.

Re:One trillion ...blah blah ....say what?

[SmittyTheBold]

As for speed, don't forget that if the data density is 33 times greater than a GXP 120, so will be the maximum data transfer rate.

That's assuming the same linear velocity of the read head...which could very easily be much lower for this technology. Don't forget that most optical media is currently much slower than magnetic media of comparable data densitites.

Not that strange..

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears to me that IBM's strategy is to leave production to other manufacturers (to small profit margin)
and instead concentrate on research, filing patents, and reaping in licence fees.

They've got quite a lot of fun stuff going on at Almaden and Zürich,
and it seems they're keeping this.

Quitting

[sean23007]

This is interesting, considering the fact that they're quitting the hard drive business. Anybody think they'll reconsider?

Why new tech never seems to hit retail

[kyfho]

I see alot of people commenting on the fact that IBM seems to be constantly anouncing bleeding edge technology but we never actualy see it hit store shelves. I think it has alot to do with recouping R&D costs. If you spend 10,000,00 dollars in research inventing a 160 Gig drive wouldnt you want to squeeze as much money out of the marketplace as possible before releasing whatever you have next? Also its not like they really have alot to worry about with somebody else beating them to the market with similar tech. What other company has as many new patents a year as IBM. All and all I would say it is just good business.

Re:Why new tech never seems to hit retail

[TheLink]

Huh? GMR hit the shelves relatively quick after discovery. The pixie dust thing too.

http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,3396,s%253D 20 1%2526a%253D2811,00.asp
was "already shipping"

IBM has moved LOTs of stuff from research to the market rather quickly and more consistently than many others.

Units?

[ThrasherTT]

"cramming as much as 25 million printed textbook pages of data on a surface the size of a postage stamp" What is up with the system of measurements that journalists use? I'd rather see units like "25 billion clay tablets per cubic cubit..."

AOL has decided to start sending these

[teamhasnoi]

out as the demo 'discs'. Postage Stamp on one side and 330 hours! on the back, plus the new version of Netscape, which will take up the rest of the space.

too bad

[mbennis]

That IBM will quit this storage domain for hitachi. IBM has done great things for our hard drives....

NYT figures are dead wrong

[return 42]

NYT: "I.B.M.'s holes are . . . half of a billionth of an inch across."

Um, no. That would be about 1/8 the size of an atom. They also say the storage medium is "a layer of plexiglass a couple of billionths of an inch thick". That would be 1/2 the size of an atom, which is quite remarkable considering that plexiglass is a polymer.

Reuters: "[The] holes are 10 nanometers. . ."

Much more credible. That's about 100 atoms across.

Why am I not surprised that no one at the Times caught this?

Re:NYT figures are dead wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What *kind* of atom? Flourine or Uranium?

Re:NYT figures are dead wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Why am I not surprised that no one at the Times caught this?

Only you can answer a question about why something doesn't surprise you. It's quite a personal thing, really.

Re:NYT figures are dead wrong

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Looks like a typo.

1 in = 25.4mm = 25*10^6nm

10nm/(25*10^6nm/in) ~0.5*10^-6 in, or half a millionth of an inch.

Re:NYT figures are dead wrong

[Danse]

and are we talking African or European?

Won't replace hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

To erase, you have to heat the whole thing so all the holes melt away. You can't erase selected bits.

Re:Won't replace hard drives

[meknapp]

From the article:

To read data, the tip is heated to 570 degrees -- not hot enough to deform the plexiglass -- and pulled across the surface. When it falls into a dent, the tip cools because more surface area is in contact with the cooler plexiglass. That temperature drop reduces its electrical resistance, which can be easily measured. To erase data, a hot tip is passed over the dent, causing it to pop up.

I wish people actually read the article before posting comments like they know what they're talking about!

Why is IBM bothering?

[mixbsd]

Following the debacle with its revolutionary glass-platter technology and the class action lawsuit that followed due to numerous disgruntled users, I don't think I'm going to trust my pr0n^H^H^H^Hmp3^H^H^H storage with anything that IBM manufactures.

Re:Why is IBM bothering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, remember all Maxtor drive larger than 80MB and smaller than about 10GB were pieces of crap and would die or have major read problems. And when Western Digital had those self destructing 1.6GB drives. Lets not forget Seagate drives that overheat if not mounted with some kind of cooling and sound like a helecopter in your computer! IBM had very reliable drives except for that peticular drive series, and every drive company has had some kind of major problem at one time or another.

....say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the catch phase that you wanted is "What you say?!?"

Microsoft Reinvents Punch Cards

[Anonymous Coward]

oh wait, that's old news: WinXP's been out for a while now.

numbers Re:Interesting

[leuk_he]

10 years from market - with maybe a 1% chance

7 out of 10 numbers are just made up an 50% of all statistics are lies, the only thing the article mentions is:

"It's in a state where all the big problems are solved,"

So where does your 10 year to market comes from? Maybe some of it is appliable in a few years.

Re:numbers Re:Interesting

[markmoss]

You are right that my numbers (10 years development, 99% chance of failure) are wild guesses - based on 35 years of watching promising new technologies move, or usually not, from the labs. Lots of unexpected problems turn up in trying to commercialize new technology, so most new developments die without ever being produced. If it gets past that hurdle, it will still die in the market unless it is much better than existing technologies, which haven't been standing still while all the problems are worked out. For example, bubble memory once sounded this good relative to competing technology (almost as fast as semiconductor RAM, nonvolatile, and might have been cheaper than disk drives), but by the time it was actually in mass production, semiconductor RAM was much faster and cheaper, while hard drives had shrunk from the size of washing machines to small enough for PC's, became cheaper and more capacious than bubble and not too much slower. There weren't enough applications where bubble was definitely better to support efficient mass production, so it was soon priced right out of the market.

Judging from this report, they haven't taken the first steps to commercializing the hole memory. They are writing and reading with a scanning electron microscope - a lab instrument that probably costs six figures. And they are writing 1,000 times slower than a modern hard drive. It would be nice to have a full backup of the server farm fit on a credit card, but not if it takes days to complete the backup... They need to move it to a purpose-built machine, solve the speed problem, get the cost way down, standardize formats, and get the drives and cartridges on the market. Sounds like ten years - if it is possible to solve the cost and the speed problems in the same machine. Using 1,000 heads instead of one would solve the speed problem _today_, but it sure doesn't help the cost issue. And by the time they are ready to market it, what will they be competing against?

Re:numbers Re:Interesting

[afidel]

Judging from this report, they haven't taken the first steps to commercializing the hole memory. They are writing and reading with a scanning electron microscope - a lab instrument that probably costs six figures. And they are writing 1,000 times slower than a modern hard drive. It would be nice to have a full backup of the server farm fit on a credit card, but not if it takes days to complete the backup... They need to move it to a purpose-built machine, solve the speed problem, get the cost way down, standardize formats, and get the drives and cartridges on the market. Sounds like ten years - if it is possible to solve the cost and the speed problems in the same machine. Using 1,000 heads instead of one would solve the speed problem _today_, but it sure doesn't help the cost issue. And by the time they are ready to market it, what will they be competing against?

The core of the Millipede project is a two-dimensional array of v-shaped silicon cantilevers that are 0.5 micrometers thick and 70 micrometers long. At the end of each cantilever is a downward-pointing tip less than 2 micrometers long. The current experimental setup contains a 3 mm by 3 mm array of 1,024 (32 x32) cantilevers, which are created by silicon surface micromachining. A sophisticated design ensures accurate leveling of the tip array with respect to the storage medium and dampens vibrations and external impulses. Time-multiplexed electronics, similar to that used in DRAM chips, address each tip individually for parallel operation. Electromagnetic actuation precisely moves the storage medium beneath the array in both the x- and y-directions, enabling each tip to read and write within its own storage field of 100 micrometers on a side. The short distances to be covered help ensure low power consumption.

While current data rates of individual tips are limited to the kilobits-per-second range, which amounts to a few megabits for an entire array, faster electronics will allow the levers to be operated at considerably higher rates. Initial nanomechanical experiments done at IBM's Almaden Research Center showed that individual tips could support data rates as high as 1 - 2 megabits per second.

Sounds like they are not reading with a TEM but with real devices, the speed problems have already been adressed, as well as power considerations. The only thing left is cost =)

Re:numbers Re:Interesting

[markmoss]

I hadn't realized from the first article that they already had their MEMS chip sort of running rather than just talking about it. But they've still got a long ways to go. I don't see how they'll get the speed they need without giving each head its own drive circuit so all the heads can go at once, rather than X-Y addressing. They've got to put the drive electronics on the chip, then figure out how to produce it at a reasonable cost. 3mm square is almost as big as a Pentium CPU.

Five years might be possible, if production experience with the few other MEMS devices now being produced is relevant to sorting out the issues with this one, and if IBM doesn't let bureacracy get in the way. (I'm afraid that last requirement is about as likely as a Vulcan ship stopping by and helping us solve all our problems...)

A practical storage device will also have to move the chip over the media, or vice versa, with accuracy of a few nanometers, and probably will have to work in two dimensions. (Disk head coils only work in one.) This is easy if you don't mind spending a lot of money, but they'll have to get the transport mechanism cost down to maybe $20 before it becomes a consumer product.

Re:numbers Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the bubble memory was pulled out of the market for military reason.

somebody help me!

[iramkumar]

to figure out how many libraries of congress you can fit into that..

i like the method...

[mike77]

There's also an article at CNN: here

I must admit, I love this quote: The technology, ... was conceived by two scientists at IBM's Zurich research labs, who discussed the idea over beer after the company's weekly soccer games
Hey, here's to drinking and computer development!!

Tera what?

[UCRowerG]

After six years of work the Zurich-based researchers say they can fit 1 terabit of data -- effectively the contents of a 100-gigabyte computer hard drive -- on a postage stamp-size piece of plastic.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought 1 Tera.... no wait. I get it: teraBIT. Nice one. It's so much more impressive to use the "tera" prefix than to simply say "125 gigabytes".

Hmm.... gives new meaning to the phrase "pins and needles" I guess.

*Working* URL

[Anonymous Coward]

http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkrese arch.nsf/pages/storage297.html#one

fixed. He accidentally put a space in there somewhere in "thinkresearch." :)

Heat-sink solution

[bsd-mon]

To write a bit of data, a microscope tip, heated to 750 degrees Fahrenheit, softens the plexiglass and dents it. To read data, the tip is heated to 570 degrees

...and is easily transfered from any Fire^H^H^H^HThunderbird

You forgot:

[leuk_he]

640 Kb will be enough for everyone.

what I want to know is...

[constantnormal]

... who's going to make the tiny little punched card readers to read these things? And how will we clear the inevitable card jams?

You are.

[mindstrm]

Where do you think your 80GB hard drive came from? 10 years ago that was unthinkable.

15 years ago a CD Rom was an unreal amount of data.

All these things are from research.

It takes 5 to 10 years to see new technologies appear on the market *provided* that they are economically viable in the first place.

Yes, we've been hearing about Holographic storage for 10 years or more now. So what? Fuck it? Who cares?

It's not economically viable for the mass market... so it's for resarch.

In 10 or 20 years, when we are tossing holocrystal storage around like it ain't no thing, with a 1 pS read/write latency and a density of 40 TB per square inch.

makes yoy think.

[leuk_he]

can only hope that you are he.

I do not post as ac for karma reason's. I stopped playing that game. Please note (if you read at 1) a lot of people posted something about this storage and HD thing. But don't think i put a lot of time in a 3 liner. If i put some thine in it i would have linked to previous /. articles

Still makes me think about that rain thing:
-Does he/she live in the rain seaon in some rainy country
-Is this a reference to some book/movie?

too bad...

[yawnmoth]

too bad Hitachi pretty much bought out IBM's hard drive market.

I guess IBM's just trying to secure the last of _their_ patents before everything they do becomes the property of Hitachi...

who cares

[2names]

Gee, I hope this leads to "New and Improved" 8-track tapes!!

IMAGINE A BEOWULF...

[Anonymous Coward]

There I said it, now where is my +5 funny

StarTrek had this already

[SWTP]

The orginal StarTrek had Plexglass storage also!

Remember all of the little color plastic square's they used for storage?

80 columns? Surprise! NOT!!!

[alumshubby]

Back around '79 or so, I remember hearing a COBOL trainer (in a corporate setting) assert that in the next century, there would be a language called COBOL, even if there was not way of knowing what it would evolve (or maybe the word is mutate) into. By now, I feel pretty secure in seconding his notion that COBOL, the Legacy Language from Heck, is never gonna fade away. (In fact, as a career option I'm weighing COBOL as a language to concentrate on.) IBM apparently feels the same way, so it's not too surprising that they'd come up with a whole new way to archive all those billions of lines of code in the handy, familiar 80x25 format.

Note to USPTO

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

_THIS_ is the kind of thing you should be awarding patents for.

Not 'for' loops.

Storage density

[xant]

. . . about 25 times as great as current hard disks.

All right, so how much denser is it than punch cards?

very disposable ram

[frovingslosh]

Think about it: The pits in a CD are permanetely under a clear protctive surface (and larger than these pits). These pits are exposed and amazingly small. I wouldn't be surprised to learn the prototype was done in clean room conditions (I would be amazed if it wasn't). I don't see this technology built into a ring, even if it was a locket type arangement that you had to fumble with. It's difficult to imagine how they could hope to protect the media and make any reasonable reader or writer that could work in normal environments.

Homer Works at the Reuters?

[coaxial]

blockquoth Reuters:

After six years of work the Zurich-based researchers say they can fit 1 terabit of data -- effectively the contents of a 100-gigabyte computer hard drive -- on a postage stamp-size piece of plastic.

Reminds me of this Homer Simpson quote:

Lisa! With a 10 thousand dollars, we'd be millionares!

Re:Homer Works at the Reuters?

[ArtDent]

After six years of work the Zurich-based researchers say they can fit 1 terabit of data -- effectively the contents of a 100-gigabyte computer hard drive -- on a postage stamp-size piece of plastic.

Okay, so they rounded...would you have been much happier if they had said, "effectively the contents of a 128-gigabyte computer hard drive"?

Re:Homer Works at the Reuters?

[Russ Steffen]

Actually that sounds about right. 100GB is 800 gigabits, so once you factor in the error correction data, it comes out to be close to 1 Tb. Well, close enough for journalism, anyway.

uh oh...

[Gavitron_zero]

...if anyone works at the post office, please be on the lookout for a letter from IBM labs, I left my glasses at home, and it looked like a stamp...

ah, misinformation.

[cisco_rob]

"After six years of work the Zurich-based researchers say they can fit 1 terabit of data -- effectively the contents of a 100 -gigabyte computer hard drive --"

(emphasis is mine...)
shouldn't that be 1000?

Re:ah, misinformation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, no.

1 terabit != 1 terabyte

Re:1999...

[bubbaD]

Hey, the shit I pirate is very meaningful! ;)
Its when I pay for things, I get stuck with the meaningless stuff, and the same goes for the bloated apps. If I can get consistant quality, I'll gladly pay for it. Welcome to the Infomation age- the problem is finding quality information within endless quantities.

Security Risk!?

[march]

I guess you just have to make sure to punch the holes on a hard surface or somebody will come by and use a piece of paper and pencil to "lift" what you wrote! :-)

What's old is new again...

[pvcf]

It's funny how computer hardware goes out of "fashion" and then gets re-incarnated later. I wonder when drums are coming back?

....Paul

Re:What's old is new again...

[Ziviyr]

I wonder when drums are coming back?

Isn't that technically what harddrive platter arrays are? Drums with huge cuts in them to massively increase surface area?

And when scandisk runs...

[jmichaelg]

... you can write your PhD thesis, the Great American Novel, 2 slashdot comments and still have time to burn.

Not an early adopter

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'll hold out for Punchcard-RW...

Some observations

[binaryDigit]

The plastic sits on a piece of silicon. Hovering above it are roughly 1,000 tiny phonograph arms, each with a needle on the end

I assume this means that these arms must move around the media, so seek times will probably be slow. Also, what happens when one or more of the "arms" becomes defective/breaks? Obviously error correction will have to be built into the system. Though interestingly, since it depends on indents/holes, theoretically you could read the thing using a sufficiently powerful microscope if the rw mechanism ever failed.

IBM's next effort

[dsyu]

will be working on creating tiny little rubber bands to wrap the tiny cards in.

Defrag

[trefoil]

that situation should be interesting, if required.

Outstanding idea.

[InspectorPraline]

Almost makes me wonder what's next...the resurrection of the UNIVAC? Seriously, though, this is great. Imagine what they could do with a simple ream of paper! 120GB/sq.inch, times 93.5 square inches per sheet, times 500 sheets in a ream...good god that's a huge disk...120GB/sq.in. * 93.5 sq.in. = 11220 GB = 11.2TB per sheet * 500 sheets = 561EB of space!! Oy!

It takes time to move into production

[Ma$$acre]

The fact is that innovations occur in the lab. And moving technology out of the lab and into manufacturing is a time consuming and expensive prospect. More often than not, several technologies and innovations combine to facilitate a "new" product.

Not only that, but lab technology is typically very fragile or requires unique setups to function. Engineers have to figure out how to get it from this primordial soup into the pipeline and that's not a simple thing.

Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate

[tsackett]

Maybe now this phrase can make a comeback.

Maybe true...

[Anonymous Coward]

They maintain projects like this one, yet they sold their hard disk drives division to another (Hitachi?).

Could this be yet another sign that HDD is not here for long?

Maybe they just invented ISO-LINEAR CHIPS :-)

Re:Really? ATF Storage - What about 3D Holographic

[geekster_2000]

3D volume holographic optical nanotechnology
" ALL IN ONE " NON - CONTACT REWRITABLE IS 40,000 terabits/sq.in that will be using
card, tape, drum, or disk media.

http://colossalstorage.net/colossal.htm

This makes IBM's CONTACT 1 terabit/sq.in a disfunctional storage technology dead on arrival.

Article from IBM Internal Site

[Nept]

Millipede: high-density storage

This new data storage idea has legs

Can you imagine storing the equivalent of 25 DVDs on a device the size of a postage stamp? IBM researchers can. Not only can they imagine doing so, they've created the technology to do it.

IBM scientists have written bits of data on a scale small enough for a storage density of a trillion bits (1 Terabit) per square inch. This extremely high density was achieved in a research project codenamed "Millipede", a nanomechanical concept for a storage device deploying thousands of nano-size "feet" that punch indentations representing individual bits into a thin plastic film. It's similar to a punch card, but on a fantastically smaller scale and re-writable.

The ultra-high storage density has been achieved by an individual tip creating densely packed indentations of 10 nanometers (millionths of a millimeter) in diameter. These dimensions allow 20 times higher density than most advanced magnetic recording technology available on the market today. According to Nobel laureate Gerd Binnig, one of the drivers of the Millipede project at Zurich Research lab, "since it is possible to address individual atoms with a nanometer-scale tip, there is room for improvements far beyond this milestone of Terabit density."

A functional storage system prototype now under development and planned to be operational early next year will deploy more than 4,000 tips working simultaneously in a field of 7 mm by 7 mm (a quarter inch across). This would make it possible to pack a complete data storage system into the size of a small flash memory card like the ones used in digital cameras, MP3 players and PDAs. While common flash memory technologies are not expected to surpass capacities in the 1 - 2 GB range in the near term, Millipede technology may well lead to a capacity range five times higher or even more, without extending the size of the device.

The scientists also believe that Millipede devices can be manufactured cost-effectively because they are based on well-known silicon technology making use of VLSI (very large scale integration) fabrication.

"Small storage systems that can be operated at low power - yet another crucial feature of the Millipede concept - could bring tremendous data capacity to mobile devices such as personal digital assistants, cellular phones, video cameras, and multifunctional watches," says Peter Vettiger, Millipede project leader at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory. "However, Millipede is still in a research stage, and while a storage device for the mobile arena is our first target, the versatility of the concept may well lead to a variety of other applications, such as large-area microscopic imaging, nanoscale lithography, or atomic and molecular manipulation."

Re:Article from IBM Internal Site

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM scientists also gave us glass platters:

http://www.tech-report.com/news_reply.x/3494

Why would you trust IBM with your data...

[Anonymous Coward]

...considering this:

http://www.tech-report.com/news_reply.x/3494

Data Security

[theblacksun]

It's always been a problem with the magnetic techniques of hard drives to actually erase data. Even after formatting and overwriting, you can still read old bits because of the inprecision in the writing techniques (see this article). Would this eliminate such a threat?

Thats a lot of porn

[Skyhoper]

200 cds of porn, now thats a lot of porn.

If you hate the Popups so much

[Anonymous Coward]

Just block them.

Just Like Diamond Age

[Mittermeyer]

This technology sounds just like Stephenson's Diamond Age, where the nanobook had a vast amount of data and programming in it for the entire education of a child, and only the human voice readers weren't stored.

Score another one for scifi.

Replacement for tape silos

[sydbarrett74]

Because of their low speeds, I see these developments replacing things like tape-drives and such, rather than replacing primary (RAM) or secondary (HD, CD, DVD) storage. In other words, nanotubes, &c. will comprise slow and super-dense tertiary storage. The gap between CPU and memory speeds is already widening. We don't need something to exacerbate that gap.

Re:No wonder they're dumping the hard drive sector

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's the soft sector, of course.

Re:No wonder they're dumping the hard drive sector

[Anonymous Coward]

it may have to do with the fact that HW is a VERY low margin busness? You now have to move thousands of the damn things for what you used to get for a few hundred.

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

They did have a reason to dump their HDD division...

Re:Really? ATF Storage - What about 3D Holographic

[kesuki]

So how much money were they asking for and how much did you give them? That page reads like something a poor mind numbed star trek addict would write up. (note: I like star trek and all, but the explanations for how the technology works is mind numbing, in the lack of coherency.)
They use all the buzz words, and they try so hard to convince you that unproven (yet not disproven) theories prove that thier product will even work. They claim to have lost funding as a 'result' of 9/11 too. They claim that they can get lasers through a ferroelectric dipolar substrate. Correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't ferroelectrics oxidized, crystaline iron? Are they even transparent? They also seem highly prone to material defects, as all crystals are.
Anyways, if the company is legit congrats to them for finally bringing holographic storage out of the research phase. However, I'd want to see the 'research team' before I gave them any of My money, If this is just one guy out of his house it is probably a scam. Especially if he's been at it for 14 years like the website seems to say (finally after 14 years etc..)

This reminds me

[Snover]

About a really, really, really really really old technology that I read about in one of those stupid Junior Scholastic magazines when I was in fourth grade (or so, which was about 7 years ago)...didn't IBM make some technology that was the size of a quarter that could store, like, a terabyte of data? I could be completely off here, but I vaguely remember that.

Of course, after looking in the attic and seeing the old 200MB hard drive for my (now disassembled) 386 I realized that it could have just been the newer generation of hard drives.

Re:80 columns? Surprise! NOT!!!

[Fluid Truth]

I've been debugging, enhancing, and writing COBOL programs for the last six years. The code is originally from 1983 (did I mention that years have always been stored as four digits?) and we have no intention of using a different programming language. For our continuing purposes, COBOL is pretty much perfect.

Almost all university profs like to tell their students that COBOL is dead and that only legacy systems too convoluted to re-code are in it, but there may be a reason they're a prof and not actively coding.