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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'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"
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.
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!