Atomic Scale Memory

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."

Comments

Re:PREDICTION

[Stephen VanDahm]

A better prediction would be that there will soon be 20 posts about how this new technology will allow folks to enlarge their pr0n collections by a factor of 10,000. I'll bet they're rolling in even as I type.

Steve

Other Equivalencies

[jstockdale]

...equivalent to storing the contents of 7,800 DVDs...

Also, you could store the contents of:

149 200GB Fluid Bearing WD HDDs

45850 CDs

116400 256MB Flash Memory Cards

298000 Zip Disks

931300 32MB Memory Sticks

OR!!! 20696000 1.44MB Floppies

No offence guys, but come on. Post meaningful figures.

Its actually 250 trillion bits per square inch.

28.42 TB per square inch.

Now thats impressive.

Re:No magnets? What about costs?

[John Hasler]

First off, if this is widely used, won't this
be expensive?

A small fraction of a cents in gold per 1000 terabytes. Your computer already has much more gold in it than one of these would require.

I realize that these are gold MOLECULES,

Gold ATOMS.