"Magnetic Tornadoes" Could Offer New Data Storage Tech

coondoggie writes to tell us about the latest technique researchers are investigating as a possible means to store data, magnetic tornadoes. "Conventional computer memories store data in "bits" that consist of two magnetic elements that record data in binary form. When these elements are magnetized in the same direction, the computer reads the bit as a '0'; when magnetized in opposite directions, the bit represents a '1,' researchers stated. According to scientists, a vortex forms spontaneously — one vortex per disk — in a small magnetic disk when the disk's diameter falls below a certain limit. Although the vortex does not whirl about like a meteorological tornado, the atoms in the material do orient themselves so that their magnetic states, or 'moments,' point either clockwise or counterclockwise around the disk's surface. At the center of the disk, the density of this rotation causes the polarity of the vortex core to point either up out of the disk or down like a tornado's funnel, researchers stated. Because the vortices that form on the disks contain two independently controllable and accessible magnetic parameters, they could form the basis for quaternary bits that would contain data written as a 0, 1, 2, or 3."

Comments

LHC

[tritonman]

How do we know these magnetic tornadoes won't grow and destroy our trailer parks?????

Re:LHC

[MyLongNickName]

We don't. However, we do advertise this as a potential side-effect to increase our funding.

There are 1 types of people who understand quints

[neo]

I suppose you'll get some kind of increase in data storage this way, but wont read/write times be longer because you'll need to deal with translations between quaternary and binary?

"Quaternary bits"?

[XanC]

Is a "quaternary bit" a "quaternary binary digit"? Doesn't make sense. I think you're after a "quaternary digit", or "quit".

Re:"Quaternary bits"?

[gEvil (beta)]

Is a "quaternary bit" a "quaternary binary digit"? Doesn't make sense. I think you're after a "quaternary digit", or "quit".

I like the sound of 'quigit'.

Re:"Quaternary bits"?

[just_another_sean]

Is a "quaternary bit" a "quaternary binary digit"? Doesn't make sense. I think you're after a "quaternary digit", or "quit".

I like the sound of 'quigit'.

Quigit eh? Quyte nice. You'll get no quyble from me.

Re:"Quaternary bits"?

[JustOK]

To help take the byte out of boring classes?

Re:"Quaternary bits"?

[Kaenneth]

I call a base 4 digit a Quatloo.

Great for storing extended bools, such as {false, true, maybe, File Not Found}

And Then

[gearloos]

So I guess now we can call Malware writers "Storm Chasers".

Re:There are 1 types of people who understand quin

[Yetihehe]

No, you can read it like two bits at once. Those bits would be actually separate channels for separate binary physical states, not one quaternary state.

Re:There are 1 types of people who understand quin

[thedonger]

Data storage increase is the first thought I had. But if solid state drives win the drive war, at least at the consumer level, it may be irrelevant. It's not like your WD Caviar will magically harness the power of quarternarian tornadoes and jump from 100GB to [something] TB. Or more. I think it may require more than just a firmware update.

I read this as "magnetic tomatoes"

[kcbanner]

I was really confused for about 5 minutes.

Re:There are 1 types of people who understand quin

[Gat0r30y]

but wont read/write times be longer because you'll need to deal with translations between quaternary and binary?

No, in fact an advancement such as this would halve the read/write times since twice as much information is read/write in each operation.

Information Theory?

[Ristoril]

I read an article about Information Theory a long, long time ago (which is probably why I can't Google it) wherein the authors demonstrated that the most efficient means of storing information would be by using an alphabet that had e (2.71828183) letters.

It was pretty interesting and has been stuck in my head. In any event, they surmised further that the closest we could get would be if we came up with some sort of trinary alphabet. They also opined that we were damned lucky to have binary as it's the next-most-efficient alphabet.

Re:Information Theory?

[MarkPNeyer]

It's pretty easy to derive this result.

Suppose you have an alphabet with 'S' different Symbols. There are S^N possible strings of length N. The authors say of that paper claim that the difficulty in reading an N digit string is proportional to the product SN. Therefore, what we'd like to do is minimize the product SN while keeping S^N Constant.

That means we define k = S^N, and therefore ln k = N ln S, so N = (ln k / ln S). That means we're trying to choose an S to minimize f(S) = S * (ln k / ln S).

If f(S) = (S / ln S) * ln(k), then
f'(S) = (S*(-1/S) + + ln(-S))* ln k
f'(S) = (-1 + ln(-S)) * ln k

The function reaches its minimum when the derviative is 0, so:

0 = (-1 + ln(-S))* ln k
1 = ln(-S)
1 = 1/ln(S)
ln(S) = 1
S = e

Tornadoes, of course

[philspear]

Why didn't I think of that? Tornadoes, in retrospect, seem like the PERFECT place to put my ordered data.

Re-discovering magnetic bubble memory

[goombah99]

This sounds a lot like magnetic bubble memory that intel, fujitsu, IMB and TI made in the 1980s.

That too had multiple states per "bubble". However the higher-order bubbles were generally not used. The reason was, it was hard enough keeping the single bit (zeroth order mode) bubbles stable at high circulation and high density.

Since here the domains are fixed and the disk moves it might be easier to use higher order magnetic domain modes.

Re:Re-discovering magnetic bubble memory

[GameGod0]

This sounds a lot like magnetic bubble memory that intel, fujitsu, IMB and TI made in the 1980s.

That too had multiple states per "bubble". However the higher-order bubbles were generally not used. The reason was, it was hard enough keeping the single bit (zeroth order mode) bubbles stable at high circulation and high density.

Since here the domains are fixed and the disk moves it might be easier to use higher order magnetic domain modes.

Magnetic vortices are significantly smaller than the bubbles in bubble memory. Because of this, there are no "higher order" states - you have 4 distinct magnetization states (CW/CCW, in/out), and there are no in-between states. The trick is figuring out how to get the switching speed down using exchange bias coupling and crazy anisotropy effects.

Disaster Recovery?

[sac13]

This brings a whole new meaning to the term...

Re:The end of binary

[xZgf6xHx2uhoAj9D]

Oh. My. God. This got an insightful modification? What has happened to Slashdot? Are we now people so un-nerd-like that we don't even realize a quarternary digit is 2 binary digits?

Gigaquads

[jack2000]

Well Star Trek already measured everything in quads... so yeah. Truth in television! Also Voyager was very fond of "Gigaquads".

Re:The end of binary

[raijinsetsu]

Quaternary would directly translate from binary. No fuzzy math needed.

00b=0q
01b=1q
10b=2q
11b=3q

Each quaternary bit would store two binary bits, all translated by the device. Bytes would still be 8 binary bits, but only 4 quaternary bits. Much easier than translating between trinary and binary...

And, as they are talking about storage medium, NOT processors, there's no need to recompile. Just have the device handle the translation, much in the same way it's done for CDs and flash memory.

Re:There are 1 types of people who understand quin

[Makoss]

You might want to go look up the differences between MLC and SLC Flash.

It's just bit packing. For example (and ignoring many low level details*) your 512-byte sector would be stored in 2048 hardware bit buckets instead of 4096 individual storage quanta.

* For purposes of illustration and ignoring the smart little tricks of hardware reality.

Re:There are 1 types of people who understand quin

[Penguinshit]

Western Digital has been harnessing the power of data black holes for years...

I hate to do this, really...

[goodmanj]

Aunt E&M! Aunt E&M! There's no place like Ohm!

So I'm guessing the strength of these magnetic gales would be measured in Henries? ... I could go on...

Stuff and nonsense

[Xenographic]

And what if we scare robots into killing all the humans? Doesn't anyone remember how scared Bender was when he saw a 2 amidst all those 0s and 1s in that nightmare?

Re:And a 1, 2, 3?

[Chris Daniel]

That would be four quaternary bits to make a byte, I believe.

2^8 = 256 possible values (binary; 8 places, 2 possible values each)
4^4 = 256 possible values (quaternary; 4 places, 4 possible values each)

Point of Failure

[jbezorg]

With current hard disks if your drive is fubar, you have some chance of recovery of data. What happens if the disk stops on these drives and the magnetic vortex disappears?