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Scientist Uses Nanodots To Create 4Tb Storage Chip
arcticstoat writes "Solid state disks could soon catch up with mechanical hard drives in terms of cost and capacity, thanks to a new data-packed chip developed by a scientist at the University of North Carolina. Using a uniform array of 10nm nanodots, each of which represents a single bit, Dr. Jay Narayan created a data density of 1 terabit per square centimeter. The end result was a 4cm2 chip that holds 4Tb of data (512GB), but the university says that the nanodots could have a diameter of just 6nm, enabling an even greater data density. The university explains that the nanodots are 'made of single, defect-free crystals, creating magnetic sensors that are integrated directly into a silicon electronic chip.' Dr. Narayan says he expects the technology overtaking traditional solid state disk technology within the next five years."
...until I can get a decent (120GB+) sized SSD that doesn't cost as much as a new video card?
Living With a Nerd
4 Terabits = 512 Gigabytes.
Somewhat misleading? Yes. Inherently false? No.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
They have microdots at a 4Tb-per-sq-inch storage density; they don't have any controller that can read and write it.
This has been "accomplished" numerous times with holographic storage media before. They just never made the read-writers...
Nah. If it were the hard drive industry, 4 Tb would be 500 GB.
I suppose that depends on which video cards and SSDs you use.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Problem is most software developers and OS makers also race to consume that memory. Honestly all the software today is a bloated blob that is horribly unoptimized for speed and efficiency.
It's disgusting how bloated most stuff is because we have 4gig of ram and 2 2.5ghz processors... why make it leand and mean? it compiles, ship it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It may be peaking soon though. 6nm is getting close to physical maximums for most techniques due to the casimir effect. Techniques that push chips from 2d into 3d will be the next useful improvement. But after that point we have run out of easy options.
Increasing speed of chips and ram could help relieve that pressure mind you. As programmers can tade off more processing for less drive usage, or count on faster ram and compress everything. This will give us a bit more time. Beyond that we will simply have to get more inventive on how we use computers.
Very very fast internet could become important, if users feel they need access to 10million TB of data personally. That may not be physically feasible on a personal computer. So 'cloud' type services would be important. Having a few duplicates rather than 1million duplicates of any given song is clearly a big improvement. This of course feeding into the idea that when we made the internet we stopped making machines, we just started making components for the one ultimate computer. And when you think of it from that perspective there is tons of room for improvement even if some of the parts are nearing the useful maximums.
> Why the hell they would measure in Tb instead of GB is beyond me though.
Because each dot stores one bit. They are building chips with arrays of dots, not complete hard drives.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
They don't have any of that information because they don't know any of it. They only have a way IN THE LAB to put a shitload of nanodots onto a medium. They mentioned that they have no packaging (way to read or even really write data into the dots) for an actual product.
It's like Ben Franklin saying, "Okay, I've discovered electricity. Computers should be along in about five years."
Okay, it's not that bad, but I hate that five year timeline that is rarely questioned but is thrown out to lure in investors and grant money.
Slashdot should have an automatic filter that looks for the five year estimate and flags with some "fat chance" special color.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
why make it leand and mean? it compiles, ship it.
And what's the answer to your question?
If it works, why optimize it? To save in storage space? How much would I be saving? 10$ in storage space for every hour of optimization?
It's not art, it's a business. You could as well ask why we don't replace steel by titanium in cars.
Problem is most software developers and OS makers also race to consume that memory. Honestly all the software today is a bloated blob that is horribly unoptimized for speed and efficiency.
It's disgusting how bloated most stuff is because we have 4gig of ram and 2 2.5ghz processors... why make it leand and mean? it compiles, ship it.
Sounds like a reasonable outcome of a cost/benefit analysis. Since when is efficiency an end in itself?
It may be peaking soon though. 6nm is getting close to physical maximums for most techniques due to the casimir effect.
Not quite sure what the Casimir Effect has to do with magnetic dots, but I should mention that 6 nm is below the Superparamagnetic limit (which is typically tens of nanometers). That means you're magnetic nanodot probably isn't magnetic.
... Which brings me to my second point: This article says nothing about what this researcher actually did. It sounds like he just fabricated an array of nanodots, which is nothing particularly groundbreaking.
Does anyone have a link to the original abstract for the conference presentation? The dots must have been multilayer "stacks", otherwise there's a good chance they won't be ferromagnetic (there's a "superparamagnetic limit" that stops ferromagnetic particles from being ferromagnetic when they get around this size.)
Lastly, the article says they'll look at housing and using "laser technology" to read back from these nanodots. They mention that as a sidenote, but it's really the most important problem if you want to make something useful. The problem with most nanomagnetic memory techniques is that reading/writing is either impractical or not yet possible.
that is simple - they don't do that or something like that because then your car might last you a long time - and that would cost them money because they wouldn't be able to have you a recurring revenue stream.
What does using titanium instead of steel have to do with cars lasting a long time? As long as you don't let salt corrode them away, steel-bodied cars will last pretty much forever. Here in the southwest, we don't have any problems with corrosion.
Besides, automakers wouldn't bother to apply undercoating if they wanted their customers' cars to rust away.
Sorry but the accelerated use of plastics and cheap alloys isn't an accident or an improvement in cars..
Now this is just plain stupid. Aluminum alloys improve performance in cars greatly by reducing weight, and also by making engines that perform far better. Most plastics are also a giant improvement; again, weight savings.