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.

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

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....

[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....

[$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!

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: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...

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?

200 CD-Roms?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

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

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: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: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

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: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...

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.

Storage density

[xant]

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

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

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?