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IBM Develops Technology That Could Store Data In Atoms
InfoWorldMike passed us a link to a story at his site about a way to perform computer functions on the atomic level. IBM has pioneered the process at their Almaden Research lab in California. Essentially, researchers detect 'magnetic anisotropy, a property of the magnetic field that gives it the ability to maintain a particular direction'. Since the process allows the detection of the 'direction' individual atoms are facing, this is the first step towards the ones and zeroes used in binary. "In a second report, researchers at IBM's lab in Zurich, Switzerland, said they had used an individual molecule as an electric switch that could potentially replace the transistors used in modern chips. The company published both research reports in Friday's edition of the journal Science.The new technologies are at least 10 years from being used for components in commercial products, but the discoveries will allow scientists to take a large step forward in their quest to replace silicon, said IBM spokesman Matthew McMahon."
reeally astoundeing stuffe.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I read really crappy sci-fi one time where humans moved to more and more obscure and technical means to store data, untill eventually they were making notches in neutrons. Since the technology to read/write it was so expensive, they just centralized it. The machine broke and all the data needed to fix it was stored on a few atoms in a vault with no way to read it.
I know it is "dimestore" technology alarmist camp, but I thought it was funny that this story is comming true. Anyone know the name of this story??
They already hold most of the patents for spintronics. http://www.nve.com/index.php#
You would think it would be embarrassing to have tags like that on the front page. But, somehow, the slashdot editors don't seem to care.
For some reason, this procedure makes me think of magnetic resonance imaging. I can't really seem to exactly pinpoint why that is, however, and I think the link I'm imagining might be totally specious.
Is this the same thing which is holding galaxies in a certain direction?
Is the universe binary?
liqbase
...data was already stored in atoms?
Dark Reflection
It sucks when buffer overflows can go critical.
Think you hated blue screens of death? Wait until you have to deal with a blue mushroom cloud of actual death.
...check spelling. But they realised that nobody wanted it, so went back to mainframes and junk.
But I like it here.
I remember when Bubble memory was the next big thing.
We had 16K RAM and we liked it.
It strikes me odd, that data still seems to be stored in binary form, although it would be possible storing for example zeroes, ones, twos and threes and then converting that stuff to binary form. If it is possible pointing the atoms at more directions than just two (why would it be limited to precisely two?), they could store dramatically more information with the same amount of data. Also the data could be read faster, when you could fit the information of two bits into one. Or the information of three bits into two, whatever. Depends on how many different ways you can turn the atoms / magnetize the disk surface.
Or is this actually being done all the time and talking about the data being in binary form on the disk is just a stupid simplification?
Where have your banknotes been?!
I'm going to develop a method of storing data on quarks, for really high data storage density!
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility
In Soviet Russia a beowulf cluster of these things imagines you welcoming your new, neural-network overlords.
Good: scientists have found how we can store vast quantities of data
Bad: we won't be able to find where we put the damn stuff
This pretty much describes the system I use today.
From what it sounded to me, they were using the direction of the spin of the electrons to hold the information. There are only two directions, so that is why you only get binary. I suppose if you found a way to read the spin of each individual electron, you'd be able to store mulitple bits per atom. And yes, this is new (certainly for computers), as currently there are two types of RAM used most of the time: SRAM and DRAM.
SRAM uses only transistors to store the data. This takes several components, so it is very big and expensive, but also very fast. DRAM uses a capacitor to store the data and a transistor to select it. This only requires two components, but accessing the capacitor is slower and the capacitor slowly loses the charge, so it has to be refreshed within a certain amount of time, or the data it holds will be lost. Both of those require components which at minimum will be several atoms big, so creating a memory cell the size of an atom will most certainly reduce the size of RAM.
There is also trinary systems. This is probably what you where trying to get at. I have heard of RAM based on trinary, but I don't know if it is in use yet. I don't think it would work here as there are only two directions the electron spins. The trinary RAM I think is based on having the capacitor with either a positive voltage, negative voltage or no voltage across it. That is what gives the three possible states. With a capacitor, you could have more, but you'd have to use analog style circuits and probably higher refresh rates, which would mean higher failure rates and other problems.
That is a very simple explanation from what I know, and technically there are other types of RAM, but hopefully it gave you an idea what is going on.
I'll finally be able to fit every episode of "Dr. Who" onto one disc!!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
I think they've been hoping for molecule- or atom-sized storage for a while, since they invented the STM and the AFM. The STM or AFM probe was used to 'write' on the surface as well as read it. I think one of the problems they had there was physical control of the probe - I'm not sure how this would be any different. Fixing the whole system to a very low temperature helps since you eliminate thermal effects. I used to do room temperature AFM and STM and it was a pain if someone opened the door to your lab and changed the temperature, or if you spent too long holding your sample or STM probe so it spent some time heating up and cooling again.
This is old news. They have been prototyping this concept since 2000.
atomic computing
WTF else were they supposed to develop storage in - anti-matter? ;-)
I mean come on - what ISN'T atomic in our world
Sorry for sounding like a jaded old hack but that phrase is getting old.
No sig today...