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Ferroelectric Storage Density Tops 20KDVDs/Cubit^2

Posted by chrisd on from the laser-beams-are-cool-too dept.

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 ;-)"

7 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Is this really important? by Blaine+Hilton · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At least right now what type of applications would this be good for? Do we really need that much storage? Perhaps if programmers wrote better code........... Then again remember when 2megs of memory was "the bomb" ?

  2. Read speed a bit low by renoX · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hope that they could use several head in parallel at the same time to increase the reading speed and also (why not?) the writing speed.

    If I remember well, a company has already done this for CD-ROM, it was reading several track at the same time, they had a commercial product but I don't know if it sold well.

    I wonder why it hasn't be done with HDD?

    Note that I'm not talking about multiple heads (too expensive), but using one head to read/write several tracks at the same time.

    1. Re:Read speed a bit low by Eccles · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If I remember well, a company has already done this for CD-ROM, it was reading several track at the same time, they had a commercial product but I don't know if it sold well.

      That would be Kenwood Tech and their TrueX drives. Seems a nice idea since they probably don't sound like an airplane taking off like other high-speed CDs do, but they had a high failure rate on their first ones that I don't think they ever lived down. It's too bad they didn't license the tech rather than trying to build it themselves.

      You can find their TrueX pages on google, but their home page announces that they've stopped making the drives.

      --
      Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
  3. Continuous 360 degree video needs this. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1, Interesting


    The day will come when some people will record 360 degree video and every sound that happens around them all the time. No need for discussion about what happened, just replay it.

  4. The really interesting bits, no pun intended by Powerdog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First, they're only currently able to read 25kB/s. Yes, 25 kilobytes per second. They think they can bump up the read speed to 3.75MB/s. But it's the write speed that's curious. The prototype writes at 2.5MB/s, and they estimate they can bump it up to 125MB/s. A medium we can write to faster than we can read!

    Second, their goal is 667 terabits per cm^2. Yep, about 2667 times more dense than the 250 gigabits per cm^2 they're claiming.

  5. many applications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's not so much the amount of memory that is important but about how small a package we can fit it in. This will allow tablet PCs and other PDA styled devices to have what the desktop PC world takes for granted. Also imagine the costs savings from application like outer space computing (every pound going up costs a fortune right?). Give people time and you'd be surprised what uses they'll come up with.

    Me, pr0n.

  6. Ferroelectricity by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'm not familiar with ferroelectricity. It sounds as if the pickup device is like a scanning tunneling microscope, with an AC field on the point to measure the impedance of an adjacent ferroelectric domain. They claim that there is a change in the impedance of the domain depending on its electrical orientation, and that they can flip these domains electricaly (presumably with the same device that reads them, I guess by putting a higher voltage pulse through it). They claim that ferroelectric materials are piezoelectric, and that they are distorting the crystal lattice to store information.

    So, is all this for real?

    Thanks

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.