IBM Shrinks Bit Size To 12 Atoms

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IBM Shrinks Bit Size To 12 Atoms

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 12, 2012 @08:53AM from the more-on-less dept.

Lucas123 writes "IBM researchers say they've been able to shrink the number of iron atoms it takes to store a bit of data from about one million to 12, which could pave the way for storage devices with capacities that are orders of magnitude greater than today's devices. Andreas Heinrich, who led the IBM Research team on the project for five years, said the team used the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope and unconventional antiferromagnetism to change the bits from zeros to ones. By combining 96 of the atoms, the researchers were able to create bytes — spelling out the word THINK. That solved a theoretical problem of how few atoms it could take to store a bit; now comes the engineering challenge: how to make a mass storage device perform the same feat as scanning tunneling microscope."

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12 atoms? Go smaller! by Xanny · 2012-01-12 08:59 · Score: 4, Funny

Preface: I'm just a programmer nerd who reads slashdot. I have no idea what I am talking about.
I wonder if it would be possible to have data storage as an ionization of a solid in the normal operating range of tech (and probably small, like carbon) where ionized atoms represent one bits and non ionized represent zero bits, and you can read atoms in some rigid lattice where the ionized ones represent ones and the neutral atoms are zeroes. Yea, there are huge problems, like preventing electron shell state dropping and keeping the electrons off the negatively charged carbon, but it seems like it would be a great objective considering the smaller data storage type after atom ionization will be measuring quark states to represent multi valued data.
1. Re:12 atoms? Go smaller! by alphatel · 2012-01-12 09:02 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  That's so 2011. You need a neutrino computer.
  
  --
  When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
2. Re:12 atoms? Go smaller! by griffjon · 2012-01-12 09:08 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Only if you care about data integrity...
  
  --
  Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
3. Re:12 atoms? Go smaller! by Amouth · 2012-01-12 10:47 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  so this will work great for WMRN memory - just where you want to keep your secrets that no one should see..
  
  --
  '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
IBM's new vision by s_p_oneil · 2012-01-12 09:00 · Score: 2, Funny

IBM's new vision:
A scanning tunneling microscope in every home with an IBM sticker on it.
1. Re:IBM's new vision by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-12 09:16 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  ...and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars!
  So like, TWO lattes?
2. Re:IBM's new vision by DriedClexler · 2012-01-12 11:44 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Please. There's a world market for maybe 5 scanning tunneling microscopes.
  
  --
  Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
The REAL question is... by Prime+Mover · 2012-01-12 09:00 · Score: 5, Funny

...once they have these new mass-storage devices, how can I turn it into a homebrew tunnel scanning microscope?
awesome by demonbug · 2012-01-12 09:01 · Score: 4, Funny

Now they just have to work on that random access time of 300000 milliseconds.
Should be easy, right?
PDP Anyone? by walkerp1 · 2012-01-12 09:22 · Score: 3, Funny

Had they used the clearly superior RAD-50 encoding, they could have stored THINK with a mere 384 atoms as opposed to 480.
1. Re:PDP Anyone? by Applekid · 2012-01-12 09:26 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Had they used the clearly superior RAD-50 encoding, they could have stored THINK with a mere 384 atoms as opposed to 480.
  I'm just glad they didn't use EBCDIC.
  
  --
  More Twoson than Cupertino
2. Re:PDP Anyone? by walkerp1 · 2012-01-12 09:37 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Had they used the clearly superior RAD-50 encoding, they could have stored THINK with a mere 384 atoms as opposed to 480.
  I'm just glad they didn't use EBCDIC.
  They tried, but the inherent chaos very nearly brought on the heat death of the universe.
Re:And... by gandhi_2 · 2012-01-12 09:41 · Score: 4, Funny

You know, when you are storing bits and you are already at 12, where can you go from there? Where?
No where.
Ours goes to 11.
One smaller.

--
THL phish sticks
Re:Bad article by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-12 10:03 · Score: 4, Funny

Yes, but the paper is tiny and can only be read at low temperatures.