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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."
This kind of devices would be incredible for backup purposes, but also, the recording method seems to be also fast, would they accept allmost-unlimited rewrites?, in that case, this technology could finally replace magnetic devices. Solid state is allways better, but so far, the existing alternatives don't offer the durability and flexibility of hard disks.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Mod me -1 redundant if you like, but for people out there, but 1 trillion b= 125,000,000,000 bytes = 116 GB, or if you're a harddrive manufacturer, its 125 GB.
More information about the company can be found at their website, http://www.nanochip.com.nyud.net:8090[Coral Cache Link].
What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex!
Warm reboots don't erase memory. Cold reboots usually don't erase memory, either. (There are still fragments of what was left before after doing a cold boot.)
And as almost all data recovery people know, reformatting a hard drive using the conventional disk formatting commands don't really erase anything; they merely create new directory structures. In order to really erase a disk, you have to use something like Eraser or `dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda`.
It is non-volatile by nature. But it is not likely to be fast enough to replace RAM. Instead it could replace Flash memory or even (depending on cost) hard drives. The real question is, how long until it's practical to manufacture and use in mass-produced products? The answer seems to be (according to the article) 2007-2010 timeframe.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
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"
(b) Testing: How are they going to test this trillion element chip ? Testing complexity grows exponential with number of elements and it will require serious consideration. It may be worthwhile to make smaller components which can be tested easily (modern chips has one-third cost devoted to testing)
(c) Redundancy: Is this process going to give more yield than conventional electronic processes ? If no, common technique of redundancy has to be utilized. This brings in the cost in terms of power, speed and delay. For example if the yield is only 90%, that means you will need ~110% resources. Not only you have to make up for the defective components, you will have to provide lot more redundancy for testing. At some point it becomes worthless as the performance will drop to floor.
But still it is a good work and perhaps will generate some new ideas.
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.
It's amazing how lucky these chip manufacturers are. Imagine to what lengths people need to go in other industries in order to convince customers to upgrade. If all you are selling is a damn chocolate bar, there is only so much that you can do to improve it. They had perfectly edible chocolate bars 100 years ago and there isn't much besides slapping "10% free" on the package that you can do. Ditto for things like headphones, ballpoint pens and pretty much everything else.
But the manufacturers of memory chips, hard disks, even CPUs, have it really easy. All they need to do is solve the technological problem of doubling the capacity/performance and the customer is eager to shell out some $$$ to get the new version. No focus groups are needed, no expensive marketing surveys. The only thing you need to do to please the customer is basically improve the obvious performance metric by 100%. You don't need to lie and twist the facts as those guys in cosmetics do with "73% more volume" for your eyelashes or "54% healthier hair" bullshit. You just make your CPU twice as fast and that flash chip twice as large, and you are done.
And if you really want to, you can say it will make Internet faster, or something...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
The IBM Millipede project doesn't use tunneling microscope technology (ATM, or usually STM). It uses a modified AFM tip that can be resistively heated. The hot tip pushes into a polymer surface and creates a hole. The hole can be "erased" by heating close to the surface and the region around the hole melts and fills it in. The reading is done with cold tips using regular AFM technology.
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!
The article says they have working prototypes. Of what? The implication is that it's a device that's a square inch in size, and it holds a terabit of data. But from the usage of "square inch" I think the reality may mean a density of 1 terabit per square inch, not that they have a terabit device. (I hope I'm wrong!). For example, they may have a prototype that stores 1000 bits in an area of a billionth of a square inch. That's a lot different than an actual terabit device! I wish articles had more details...
...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.
Most posters seem unimpressed with the storage density they are reporting, but I'd like to point out a couple of things. (Note that I use atomic force microscopes in my "job" -- I do academic research.)
Firstly, the storage density they are reporting is for a prototype setup, and it's already as good as curent HD technology. The exciting thing is not the value they currently have, but rather the fact that this technology can be pushed very very far. Thus, comparing this new technology to a mature technology (magnetic disks) is not really fair. I do believe that if this new technology is investigated for 10 years, it could outperform magnetic drivers in terms of storage density.
Secondly, the data transfer rate can be much higher with this new technology. The millipede project uses an array of thousands of AFM-like tips, which means that in principle 1000 bits of data are read at a time (compared to, for example, 4 bits read at one time in a magnetic disk drive with 4 platters). We all know that HD access is a major bottleneck in modern computers. This new concept could immediately speed that up by 2 orders of magnitude. I think that's worthy of consideration!
That having been said: don't hold your breath. MEMS is a rapidly evolving field, but it will be awhile before it can really beat out the mature magnetic technology. The article also doesn't give any details on how this new technology works. The potential is great, but alot of work has to be done.
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.