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

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: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.