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Nano-Scale Memory Fits A Terabit On A Square Inch
prostoalex writes "San Jose Business Journal talks about Nanochip, a company that's developing molecular-scale memory: "Nanochip has developed prototype arrays of atomic-force probes, tiny instruments used to read and write information at the molecular level. These arrays can record up to one trillion bits of data -- known as a terabit -- in a single square inch. That's the storage density that magnetic hard disk drive makers hope to achieve by 2010. It's roughly equivalent to putting the contents of 25 DVDs on a chip the size of a postage stamp." The story also mentions Millipede project from IBM, where scientists are trying to build nano-scale memory that relies on micromechanical components."
I'll be able to store my gigaquads in a compact space.
They were talkig about this a while back on simulatedlucidity.com
Is it just me, or is persistent memory (i.e. magnetic) a really bad idea?
Now instead of rebooting to wipe viruses, spyware, crashed programs from memory, now we're going to have to wave a magnet inside our computers.
A step backwards, if you ask me.
Quoted for redundancy.
Or, if they're rounding, is it a tibibit?
Cool, the next time I need to send something over sneakernet to someone far away, I'll just send a postcard with 2 stamps on it. 1 postal and 1 storage stamp.
i'm impressed... 25 dvds for 1 terabit. but i think were all holding out until we hit 150 zip disks on a square centimeter or 172 ls-120's on the size of a heineken bottle cap.
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
Well, not with the software overhead in various checksums that will be had in 2010:
- MPAA/RIAA field (the "copy checksum")
- Dept. of Homeland Security header (the "red checksum")
- UN Standards bit (the "blue checksum")
- .SUM (the "Microsoft checksum")
Those are apt to take up quite a bit of space. So maybe you'll get 15 DVDs (maybe 20 by paying Microsoft an expansion fee) on that postage stamp.[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
So, if we attached a couple square inches of this stuff to a pigeon, or filled a 747 with some of these chips, and flew it around the world, how fast would the transfer rate be?
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
Except, of course, nobody said anything about terabytes, or even terrabytes.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
My god, it's two dimensional! Our memory limitations are over!
We don't measure HDs in Terabits . 1 Tbit = 128 GBytes or 128 gigs3
Second, converting this from inches to Centimeters, we get slightly less than 20GB/cm^2
Yes ladies and gentlemen, 20 Gigs per Squared centimeters.
That's a nice increase but it sure as hell isn't overwhelming.
Assuming a radius of 5 cm for a 3.5" HD, we get a surface of 80 cm^2 per platter. That comes to 800 Gb per platter. around 8 times the current density.
These new-gen HDs will be at most 8 times bigger than those we have right now.
That's it. 8 times. Not even a single order of magnitude.
Now mod this up or be destroyed!
...there is a single atom. Orbiting it is an electron. When it's in a spin up state I consider it to contain a 1. When spin down it's a zero. There: a prototype of a multi exaterapetabit/mm^3 storage device at the end of my nose. Oh wait - I might be able to hype this up more. Oh yes...it's an electron, so it's in a superposition state. It's a multi exapetaterabyte/mm^3 quantum computer at the end of my nose. Surely /. have got to publish this story now.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
They didn't explain how many volkswagons per metric second.
Boss: What are you two working on? You've been sitting and staring at the screen for hours.
Engineer 1: Uh....the millipede project.
Engineer 2: Yeah. Lots of data stored in two dimensional space.
Boss: Great! Keep up the good work. (Leaves)
Engineer 1: Whew that was close.
Engineer 2: In more ways than one. Look out! Here comes the spider again...
Engineer 1: I love MAME.
Why can't people just standardize on a common unit of measurement such the number of Encyclopedia Brittanica's or the number of Library of Congress's?