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IBM Reinvents Punch Cards

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the plus-ca-change dept.

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.

1 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. NYT figures are dead wrong by return+42 · · Score: 5, Informative
    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?