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Graphene Could Make Magnetic Memory 1000x Denser
KentuckyFC writes "The density of magnetic memory depends on the size of the magnetic domains used to store bits. The current state-of-the-art uses cobalt-based grains some 8nm across, each containing about 50,000 atoms. Materials scientists think they can shrink the grains to 15,000 atoms but any smaller than that and the crystal structure of the grains is lost. That's a problem because the cobalt has to be arranged in a hexagonal close packing structure to ensure the stability of its magnetic field. Otherwise the field can spontaneously reverse and the data is lost. Now a group of German physicists say they can trick a pair of cobalt atoms into thinking they are in a hexagonal close packing structure by bonding them to a hexagonal carbon ring such as graphene or benzene. That's handy because the magnetic field associated with cobalt dimers is calculated to be far more stable than the field in a cobalt grain. And graphene and benzene rings are only 0.5 nm across, a size that could allow an increase in memory density of three orders of magnitude."
Sweet, more room for p0rn. I mean, more room to store my philosophical musings about the world we live in...
-- I'm just not sure he knew exactly how that would come out to be true!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Let me guess. They're going to stick this stuff to a platter and spin it past some sort of electromagnet. I want terabyte USB thumb drives, not yet another mechanical storage device.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
German physicists say they can trick a pair of cobalt atoms into thinking they are in a hexagonal close packing structure by bonding them to a hexagonal carbon ring such as graphene or benzene
I have a friend who was tricked into thinking he was a hexagonal close packing structure after spending a bit too much time around benzene.
which is totally what she said
Does this mean my walkman will hold 45,000 minutes of music? take that iPod!
say they can trick a pair of cobalt atoms into thinking they are in a hexagonal close packing structure by bonding them to a hexagonal carbon ring such as graphene or benzene.
the cobalt has to be arranged in a hexagonal close packing structure to ensure the stability of its magnetic field. Otherwise the field can spontaneously reverse and the data is lost.
So one day the atoms might just realize that they've been tricked and you'll end up with your computer on fire because your benzene chains have all broken and you end up with 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
OK, just stop right there. Porn and beehives do NOT mix.
Rule 34.
I refuse to use
Yes, that's damn good. Three orders of magnitude is very roughly a full decade's worth of progress in the hard drive world. Whoever did the graphene work has really earned their pay.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I trhed an e"rlx be|a tast.( Uhe res7ltw w%ren/t so pretpyn
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Sweet, more room for p0rn. I mean, more room to store my philosophical musings about the world we live in...
And the difference is what again?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Storage requirement is going up, relentlessly:
VCD = 700Mb
DVD = 4.7Gb
Dual-layer Blu-ray = 50Gb (potentially 100Gb; 4 layer @ 25Gb per layer.
And don't forget that Ch-erman scientists never sleep:-)
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
As data density increases, so does the rate at which it can be read. Assuming two orders of magnitude increase (100x) and individual bits staying roughly the same shape, the linear density increases by a single order of magnitude. (10x bits per track, 10x tracks). The drive will be able to read at 10x the speed.
At 3 orders of magnitude, you can expect a read speed improvement of roughly 3000%. (sqrt(1000) ~31.6)
Ok sequential IO is going to improve some as more data will pass under the head compared to todays disks. But Random IO isn't going to feel the same benefit because that's influenced more by Rotational Delay (fixed by spin speed) and the time it takes for the head to shift between tracks: Disk Seek. So your figures are going to be wildly off in real life.
Before I can get excited, I need to know when this is proven experimentally. The FTA refers to a calculation. There are lots of possible things that are achieved with a calculation, but translating it in practice is a totally different matter. BTW, I am an experimentalist nanoscientist (working on graphene, actually), part of my daily job is to prove that computational results can be achieved in reality.
Back when I was in college one of the 'cool' old Comp Sci professors had a tale he liked to share with his classes on the first day. I had him in a couple of classes, so I heard it over and over again. His presentation made it an amusing story if you could get over the fact that he smelt as if he lived in an ashtray.
It seems that back in the mainframe days, the standard way of increasing storage size on your hard drives was to make a bigger platter. Seems rather simple, right? The storage size grows exponentially with its radius. So adding an inch each time can lead to some fairly nice results, and with some platters topping out at 24 inches, that's some space.
Except....
One day, the university ordered the 'latest' hard drive for one of their mainframes. I'm sure it was a behemoth, it probably held around 50 meg. The vendor came by and installed it, and everything seemed fine till a few months later when the drive seemed to start failing, at about 30% capacity, writes stopped working and anything written to seemed to have been corrupted. They were puzzled, but this is why such things service contracts. The vendor came out, replaced the drive, and everyone went on with life.
Till it happened again, at about the same capacity. Another replacement was made and vendor was quite red-faced and explained that they seemed to have run into a batch of dud drives. All was forgiven and life went on.
Till, it happened the third time. At this point, it was starting to embarrass everyone: The vendor, the people who ordered the hard drive in the first place, etc. So this time, instead of just allowing the vendor to take the drive back, the dean of the department demanded they diagnose the issue there on the spot.
Now, this wasn't the age of the sealed drive cases, certainly drives were still kept 'clean' but we weren't to the point yet where a single grain of dust could wipe out megabytes of info (heck, even the 24 inch platters needed to be in arrays of 50+ just dream of hitting 100 meg) so cracking open the drive wasn't that big of a deal.
So the vendor's tech, hoping to appease a clearly angry customer in the day and age when parts cost tens of thousands of dollars, popped open the drive.
Want to guess what they found?
Larger disks do indeed result in more surface area, but they also result in a higher centrifugal force on the edges. An increased force which the vendor apparently hadn't accounted for. Once the disks began to spin up, the glue holding the magnetic dust to the platter gave way, resulting in the platters being stripped clean after a certain radial length from the center. The disks themselves were fine up to that point, the dust was plastered to the case itself and when the platters came up to speed any dust that had fallen back onto them was once again flung up against the case.
The reason why the disks didn't seem to fail till they reached a certain capacity was simply because they weren't being used in a RAM fashion but were being written to in a sequential manner. The outer portions of the platters were only being hit once the inner portions were written to.
Perhaps the reason spindle speeds haven't gone up lately could be part of the same issue. Or perhaps I'm simply indulging in a bit of pointless nostalgia as I wait for this report I'm running to finish. Who knows...?
Bee Porn
The storage size grows exponentially with its radius.
At a fixed data density (and a fixed number of platters), storage is proportional to the area of the platter, which is proportional to the square of the radius.
Storage size grows quadratically with its radius, not exponentially.
You are thinking wrong. Instead of thinking of disk capacities increasing by 3 orders of magnitude, think of disks as shrinking nice and small (1 1/2"), using a lot less power and generating less heat yet being faster and storing twice the data of today's drives. Netbooks with the storage capacity of a large desktop of today.