Coming Soon, 250 DVDs In a Quarter-Sized Device

Several readers have remarked on a new technique developed by scientists at UC Berkeley and University of Massachusetts Amherst that has the promise of achieving storage densities of 10 terabits per square inch. "The method lets microscopic nanoscale elements precisely assemble themselves over large surfaces. ... Xu explained that the molecules in the thin film of block copolymers — two or more chemically dissimilar polymer chains linked together — self-assemble into an extremely precise, equidistant pattern when spread out on a surface... Russell and Xu conceived of the elegantly simple solution of layering the film of block copolymers onto the surface of a commercially available sapphire crystal. When the crystal is cut at an angle... and heated to 1,300 to 1,500 degrees Centigrade... for 24 hours, its surface reorganizes into a highly ordered pattern of sawtooth ridges that can then be used to guide the self-assembly of the block polymers."

Comments

DVDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares how many DVDs? How many Libraries of Congress is it, that's what I want to know.

Re:DVDs

[CRCulver]

We're living in the future. The thought of a library fit onto a quarter-sized device makes me think of that scene from Gene Wolfe's science fiction masterwork The Book of the New Sun where the curator of the Earth's largest and most ancient library says:

There is a cube of crystal here --- though I can no longer tell you where --- no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does. Though a harlot might dangle it from one ear for an ornament, there are not volumes enough in the world to counterweight the other.

The development of such small memory is a significant step forward. Just think about how the writings of the human race can be better preserved if it all fits on a small, lightweight and easily duplicated device. It could be spread all over the solar system as protection against all manner of cataclysms. I wonder how long it stays readable though, before it succumbs to some kind of rot.

Re:DVDs

[allawalla]

Seems like 500 TB in the library of congress, At 10Tb an inch -- About 400 square inches for the library of congress.

Re:DVDs

[JaredOfEuropa]

I wonder how long it stays readable though, before it succumbs to some kind of rot.

I imagine the future after mankind has passed away, where some alien race stumbles upon one of these libraries with the collective wisdom of humanity preserved on it, and upon trying to make sense of the contents, instead see a message: "We cannot verify you rights to access this material; the DRM server that can validate your license appears to be down. Please try again later".

Re:DVDs

[Albanach]

Seems like 500 TB in the library of congress

What size is that in a useful unit, like Olympic swimming pools or double-decker buses?

Re:DVDs

[von_rick]

Your toasting partitions must be terribly fragmented, and you must have tons of redundant and archaic bits of crumb affecting your performance.

Re:DVDs

[creepynut]

Funny? Maybe. Unfortunately, I think it's more accurate (and sad) than funny.

Re:DVDs

[SharpFang]

Seems like its data density is 200 miliOlympicPools per kiloLibraryOfCongress.

Re:DVDs

[llZENll]

More than likely no one will ever know of anything we did if humans are extinct. If you read up on time capsules, data retention, and info on what would happen to the earth if mankind disappeared it is an sobering realization that after only 50,000 years most traces of humanity will be gone. And after only a few million years, which is minuscule on a galactic time frame, every trace will have vanished, even our weapons grade plutonium will have decayed to its normal state, and all of this long before the sun will obliterate our solar system.

http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,351113,00.jpg
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/player.html?channel=1797&category=5487&title=05068_00

Re:DVDs

[davester666]

The size of the LOC is constantly changing. You need to specify the date/time to be used to determine the size of the LOC before you can do the conversion.

Sure, you can use the default of 'right now', but if everybody does this, it makes comparisons useless, as everybodies 'LOC' constant is different.

We must push for an international standard for the amount of data in a single 'Library of Congress'.

Once this is done, we can discuss whether we should enforce this value on the real Library of Congress, so it's contents match the size of the international standard.

Nice, hopefully coming soon

[foxalopex]

This seems like it has some potential. Hopefully it will make it out of the lab considering how many times I've seen the promise of amazing technology only to find that eventually it isn't practical or has some sort of manufacturing limitation. Oh, and while you're at it, when you do create this "new technology" don't riddle it with DRM issues.

Re:Nice, hopefully coming soon

[reashlin]

> This seems like it has some potential. Yup, it'll be good for storing your router logs http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/09/02/20/131224.shtml?from=rss [slashdot.org]

Re:Nice, hopefully coming soon

[knarfling]

Sorry, probably not any time soon.

Not because of the tech or DRM or anything, but because this is not a new storage medium as most of the comments below seem to indicate, but because it is a new METHOD of creating storage.

From TA (Yes, I actually RTFA [sometimes, but I don't make it a habit]), it appears to be a new way to create semiconductors. This process would be used to create RAM, microprocessors, or other semiconductor manufacturing. Think of it as being able to create a 10 TerraByte RAM stick the same size as a 8 GigaByte ram stick now.

Furthermore, the heating process is not used for each set of RAM chips created. I heat up one huge crystal and then use it as a bed to create a large plate of semiconductor material which I can cut multiple RAM chips. I no longer have to use the expensive nano lithography to create chips. I only need one bed to make many, many plates. By changing the heating process, I can create one bed for RAM chips, another for microprocessors and another for a custom chip.

Why won't we see it soon, then? Because chip manufacturers already have tons of money invested in nano lithography and won't be willing to just drop it. The author seems to think that since it only replaces the nano lithography and harsh chemical processes that everyone will jump at it in order to make cheaper chips. I am not so optimistic, but would love to see it.

Art Immitates Life

[chill]

"This fascinating little gadget is supposed to replace the CD; guess I'll have to buy the White Album again." - Agent K, Men In Black

coming soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

f- coming soon
coming soon should be only be able to be used if it in on shelves in 90 days or less.

real vs. vaporware

[rubycodez]

my mini-van full of 9-track can hold 3 TB, and is real. don't bother me with this vaporware speculation!

Re:real vs. vaporware

[Roland Piquepaille]

my mini-van full of 9-track can hold 3 TB

Is that 8-track + parity?

Heated for HOW Long?!

[Logical Zebra]

...and heated to 1,300 to 1,500 degrees Centigrade... for 24 hours...

I certainly hope they can improve those figures. From a manufacturing standpoint, that sounds very expensive.

Re:But..

[Kamots]

Considering that we've been able to artificially make sapphires for over 100 years now... and that things like the glass on your grocery-store's barcode scanner is probably made from sapphire glass (a thin wafer of cut sapphire)...

Well, I'm thinking that it's not that large of a problem.

we need a new term for press release science

[cats-paw]

This growing trend of announcing lab discoveries which _might_ hold commercial promise _sometime_ in the future, _maybe_, are really kind of annoying.

What do these accomplish ? Do they show the people supplying the research $ that something is being accomplished and that the researches aren't just sitting around the lab smoking fatties ?

Vaporware just doesn't do these "discovery" press releases enough justice.

Could some clever person out there think of a nice derogatory term for them ?

Something to do with flying cars, maybe.

Let me explain it in slashdot terms

[SmallFurryCreature]

They mean "soon" as in the sentence "you will be having sex soon".

== never

Re:Poor math

[Albanach]

but they're off by an order of magnitude.

8.4GB * 250 = 2.1TB, not 10TB.

Perhaps they were looking at single layer DVD

4.7GB * 250 = 1.175TB

1.175 * 8 = 9.400 Terabits

Since, the summary points out it's 10 terabits per square inch, not terabytes as you seem to be using.

Re:When I get...

[LUH 3418]

But of course... This is why we now have 32GB+ USB keys... Because the RIAA/MPAA would never allow devices with this kind of capacity and read/write access to fall into our hands! Seriously... Why don't you take off that tinfoil hat?

The reason we're not seeing any of those insanely dense holographic storage technologies and other forms of vaporware is because right now, it doesn't work. The huge claims in this article are either the result of journalists not understanding what's going on, or researchers trying to get funding.

A horse in my wallet.

[SharpFang]

Well, say what you want, right here with me, in my wallet, I have a horse. Smaller than a quarter.
Precisely, the complete genome sequenced and sorted. On a 2GB MicroSD card.

"A lot of books" is an odd abstract that doesn't really impress me. But the idea of a full, unabridged, complete set of information which describes a real lifeform in full, contains the program of all the life functions, all the complexity of neural system, all the mysteries of instincts and social behaviors, the complexity of senses, the strength, immunity, lifeforce of a powerful creature - all this potential, described as a bunch of files consisting of rows upon rows of letters AGCT (gzipped).

Sure we have no technology to reproduce a living creature from this data alone. But that looks like a really small problem compared to all the incredible knowledge achieved through billions of years of evolution, to solve all these problems of creating a standalone, self-repairing, self-replicating, self-defending, and quite pretty to that, piece of "biotechnology" - actually, the solution to re-creating it from that data (only on different media) is right in that data. We just can't really use it.

250 high quality movies, in some future? blah.
A horse in my wallet, now and today, that is what impresses me, really.

Re:A horse in my wallet.

[Your Pal Dave]

A horse in my wallet, now and today, that is what impresses me, really.

I dunno, any horse manages to keep a copy in the nucleus of each of its cells.

Re:A horse in my wallet.

[HiThere]

That's probably about 1/2 of the information required to reproduce a horse. The genome isn't everything, even if it were complete (which I doubt, because repetitive segment of codons are beyond what I believe is our current ability to sequence).

But *if* you had the complete genome, including the mitochondiral sequences, etc. it still wouldn't be enough. You also need the environment to raise the genome, which includes not only mechanisms for feeding it, but an unknown but large number of prions which are required for proteins to fold correctly. Not all proteins require such assistance, but many do, and without them you can't create a live horse...or any other mammal, probably any other chordate.

I'm guessing that the genome is half the information needed. It could be considerably less than half. (Or, of course, more. I can't even tell if I'm being conservative.)

Note that the genome carries practically all the information for the variation between horses...or between horses and zebras. But this isn't at all the same as half the information.

Re:A horse in my wallet.

[smallfries]

It's a nice idea, but not actually true.

There is enough information on that card to create a horse within the environment of a horse. There is nowhere near enough information to create a horse from scratch.

Look at the new cloning projects trying to bring back extinct animals from the dead. The first step is to find a living species that is genetically close enough to act as a surrogate host.

Re:A horse in my wallet.

[Yetihehe]

But the idea of a full, unabridged, complete set of information which describes a real lifeform in full, contains the program of all the life functions, all the complexity of neural system, all the mysteries of instincts and social behaviors, the complexity of senses, the strength, immunity, lifeforce of a powerful creature - all this potential, described as a bunch of files consisting of rows upon rows of letters AGCT (gzipped).

Yeah, but it takes YEARS to compile! Also if you don't compile it in a networked environment with some of the same nodes, --social-behaviors option is often ignored.

Re:How many Humans?

[PalmHair]

Does 1 KLOC = 1024 or 1000 LOCs? Also, how does that translate to metric units - GBs. (GB - Gutenberg Library)

Re:Hmm...

[Eli Gottlieb]

Take a long-standing conflict like, say, Israel and Palestine. Do we really want it to be possible to pre-program the next generation with vivid memories of all of the perceived injustices and wrongs committed over the last 50/100/1000 years?

Once again, Dune dealt with this problem. The idea is that you leave the genetic memories latent within the person until they reach adulthood, have a well-formed psyche, and are prepared for it, then let them remember their ancestors' lives. This prevents memories of events that happened 1000 years ago from traumatizing a person or becoming to integrated into their identity.

Of course, in the Israel-Palestine case you still run into the problem that the settlers and the Arabs already define themselves by supposed atrocities perpetrated against them anywhere from 50 to 2000 years ago without any genetic memories at all. Letting them remember that the XYZ Massacre was actually faked (yeah, some have been in that area) or that the ABC Conquest wasn't as violent as the stories and histories say might actually be beneficial, now that I think of it.

Re:How many Humans?

[jshackney]

1 KLOC = 1024
1 KLoC = 1000