Ferroelectric Storage Density Tops 20KDVDs/Cubit^2

DeAshcroft writes "As reported in Technology Research News, researchers from Tohoku University, the Japanese National Institute for Materials Science, and Pioneer Corporation have demonstrated a prototype ferroelectric (as opposed to ferromagnetic) storage mechanism with density of 1.5 trillion dots per square inch. No word on why Japanese researchers are using square inches, but the new storage benchmark is the DVD. This is 47 DVD's in a square inch, or over 20KiloDVD's per square cubit. Original paper appeared in the Applied Physics Letters." In related memory news, an Anonymous Coward writes "It appears the the ever present pause between photo's on a digital camera might finally be fixed. A company now claims http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/102/C1396/ ) to have kicked up the write speed on a compact flash card up to 4MB/sec. This means we lesser photographers can now get the right action shot just by volume alone ;-)"

Comments

Inches? Cubits?

[cperciva]

For those of you using sane units, this is about 250 gigabits per cm^2.

Simpler units

[XNormal]

The recoring area of a DVD is 14 square inches. So the density of this new recording technique is 14*47=658 times greater than a DVD.

Re:Square cubit?

[dublin]

Why the US still clings to imperial units is beyond me.

Actually, for the simple reason that they're what the technological world was built on, and also the not-inconsequential fact that English units often tend to relate to the real-world better than thier Metric/SI counterparts.

This is NOT just an artifact caused by familiarity: For ordinary use, the English units are often just more convenient because thier sizes are more applicable to the problem at hand. For instance, in machining and design of precision parts, thousandths of an inch turn out to be considerably more useful than metric units, just simply because of the mechanics of material removal using common machining processes. This is one reason almost all machining in high-precision industries like Aerospace and Oil/Petrochemical/Energy is still done in English units. (Note that the recent NASA Mars probe debacle only happened when one group deviated from accepted industry practice of using English measurements and switched to Metric. (And without even telling anyone, at that!) The simple reason the error was not caught is that no idiot (except maybe a French idiot, they still haven't got over thier Napoleonic pride in the moronic Metric system) would use metric measurements in an aerospace context - it's just not done.)

Another good example of the oh-so-awkward size of metric units is the liters/100km unit that has to be used to measure fuel econonomy in reasonably sized numbers. Ugh. There are dozens of other examples.

Units are somewhat arbitrary, but to be honest, in my engineering career, I've seen many more errors with Metric units (decimal point errors, imagine that!) than I have with the English system.

HELP STAMP OUT THE METRIC SYSTEM!

P.S.: Of course, what we really need to adopt is a correct measurement system based on Dublins, that perfect unit of length between a yard and a meter, where the acceleration of gravity here on earth would be 10 Dublins/s^2. Physics and engineering students worldwide would celebrate my birthday with fireworks and parties. :-)