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Atomic Scale Memory

Posted by michael on from the quarks-coming-next dept.

maddugan writes "Technology Research News is reporting that researchers from the University of Wisconsin at Madison have put the theoretical to the test by using single silicon atoms to represent the 1s and 0s of computing. This is equivalent to storing the contents of 7,800 DVDs in one square inch of material."

5 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Check out the time frame by Liquidity · · Score: 2, Informative

    At the bottom of the story, a key factoid: "Timeline: > 20 years" Holographic memory at 1 TB/cc will give this technique a run for its money on density and will probably be ready first.

  2. Re:mp3's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    320kbps wav? That wouldn't sound so hot. CD quality audio is 172 kilobytes (or kebibytes if you're an idiot) per second. Although you should use flac since you'll store roughly twice as much audio, losslessly, in the same space.

  3. Himpsel by Madtown+PLT · · Score: 2, Informative

    Although the article doesn't mention his first name, "Himpsel" is Franz Himpsel. Check out his homepage here.

  4. Re:mp3's by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 3, Informative

    Um, a 320 kilobits per second .wav would sound like crap.

    CD audio is 44,100 samples per second per channel. Each sample is 16 bits and there are 2 channels.

    That works out to 1411200 bits per second, or just over 1378 kbps.

    Anyway, after working with 96kHz/24bit/multitrack studio equipment CDs sound like crap too. Which is what DVD-A is pretty close to. I think Vorbis streams have support for higher sampling rates, greater bit depth, and >2 channels.

  5. Re:Feh. Only ONE bit per atom... by Christopher+Thomas · · Score: 3, Informative

    Only half joking: Researchers at U.Michigan hope to store up to 10 bits per atom, by using Rydberg states.

    I seem to recall that a group used similar techniques to store much more than that (they wanted to encode a small image's bits).

    The problem, of course, is that readout tends to be destructive, and you'll have a lot of fun trying to compete on a density basis with the solid-substrate schemes :).