World's Smallest Hard Drive Built of Atoms

[Karlis]

Hard drives could one day be the size of rice grains. Scientists at IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science have built the world's smallest unit of magnetic storage, using just 96 atoms to create one byte of data.Conventional drives require a half a billion atoms for each byte. Read more...

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

Goodness, that's amazing.

[Coffey]

With tech like this, we can properly say goodbye to towers. Imagine how small servers could be as well.

[ExpandMyMind]

I think this is related:

IBM researchers make 12-atom magnetic memory bit

Researchers have successfully stored a single data bit in only 12 atoms.

Currently it takes about a million atoms to store a bit on a modern hard-disk, the researchers from IBM say.

They believe this is the world's smallest magnetic memory bit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16543497

Edited January 14, 2012 by expandmymind

[:PsYKoTiC:BeHAvIoR:]

Hard drives could one day be the size of rice grains.

I would hate to think about the moment you realized you misplaced your external rice grain HDD. LOL!

[rashore]

Very cool. I sort of wonder how something like this could improve an object like the new Raspberry PI that's coming out.

[HawkLord]

I would hate to think about the moment you realized you misplaced your external rice grain HDD. LOL!

One sneeze and there goes all you data

This is a great step forward. Once we master nanotech we can all have super computers on our wrists

[questionmark]

One sneeze and there goes all you data

This is a great step forward. Once we master nanotech we can all have super computers on our wrists

It is not a supercomputer on your wrist, I kept my drive content by cloning drives since my first PC back in the 80s, nowadays I have storage problems with 2 2-TB drives. The problem is that the amount of data amassed gets bigger and bigger.

[Xanthurion2]

what is the world's obsession with making things smaller and smaller and wasting more and more money on useless crap?

[Drev]

what is the world's obsession with making things smaller and smaller and wasting more and more money on useless crap?

How is this useless? It's just a way to get more storage space. The fact they keep making it smaller is so you can pack more of it in conventional units. So when you pack a few 100 of those HD's in something the size of a current HD you could get HD's with maybe a few petabytes or even exabytes.

As data keeps getting bigger (compare for example the amount of space required for games 10 years ago and now) this is a great innovation.

[badeskov]

what is the world's obsession with making things smaller and smaller and wasting more and more money on useless crap?

It also significantly decreases power consumption, which is a huge drive in these technologies. So yeah, the "obsession" is very important.

Cheers,

Badeskov

[George Ford]

How is this useless? It's just a way to get more storage space. The fact they keep making it smaller is so you can pack more of it in conventional units. So when you pack a few 100 of those HD's in something the size of a current HD you could get HD's with maybe a few petabytes or even exabytes.

As data keeps getting bigger (compare for example the amount of space required for games 10 years ago and now) this is a great innovation.

Yeah, I think that we will have a standard size internal HD for backwards contemptibility 1st. But they will have a much huger capacity. Graphics cards are already at the point they can handle much bigger and many more textures so games are getting huge, I think up to 14Gig if you have add-ons etc. I would imagine 50-60Gig will not be uncommon within 3 years.

Also there was a business man on 'This Morning' (day time tv) a few weeks ago and he said he had seen new prototype super HighDef TV's but that it would take awhile for disc storage (i.e Bluray discs) to have enough capacity to hold all the extra info required to take advantage of the new tv's.

[willowdreams]

forgive me, if someone posted this already.. but when i read this, two things came to mind, both of them exciting to me.

1. injection under the skin, you know how woman have birth control that is put in their upper arm and every few months removed, then another put in place? I imagine perhaps a computer that is stimulated by thoughts/nerve endings or somehing, and when you want to upgrade fo in and have it upgraded. perhaps it is activated by voice control.

2. jewelry. ring, watch/bracelet, necklace. imagine such a computer? and the monitor? whatever you are looking at. you know what i mean?

[Xanthurion2]

How is this useless? It's just a way to get more storage space. The fact they keep making it smaller is so you can pack more of it in conventional units. So when you pack a few 100 of those HD's in something the size of a current HD you could get HD's with maybe a few petabytes or even exabytes.

As data keeps getting bigger (compare for example the amount of space required for games 10 years ago and now) this is a great innovation.

It also significantly decreases power consumption, which is a huge drive in these technologies. So yeah, the "obsession" is very important.

Cheers,

Badeskov

ok i guess that makes sense. but i don't think there is really a need for that much storage space

[questionmark]

ok i guess that makes sense. but i don't think there is really a need for that much storage space

That is what I thought when 5 MB drives came up in the 80s.

We are living in times when a single video driver need 30 MB of disk space.

[devilmaycare]

Yes and it resembles their IQ. Or rather, how much can be in one place? I'll leave that to your imagination.

Edited January 24, 2012 by devilmaycare

[Mr Supertypo]

what is the world's obsession with making things smaller and smaller and wasting more and more money on useless crap?

whatz up with people nowadays labelling everything they dont understand as...useless and waste of money?

[Mr Supertypo]

That is what I thought when 5 MB drives came up in the 80s.

We are living in times when a single video driver need 30 MB of disk space.

One we will all laugh of this....do u remember when video drivers only were 30 mb big? loooool ;-)

[badeskov]

One we will all laugh of this....do u remember when video drivers only were 30 mb big? loooool ;-)

Those were the days Or when they were in kB

Cheers,

Badeskov

PS: One can never get too much HD space

[Xanthurion2]

whatz up with people nowadays labelling everything they dont understand as...useless and waste of money?

what's up with all the people who constantly have to comment on things they think are stupid when they should stop derailing the topic. trust me i completely understand what i'm talking about.

[Mr Supertypo]

what's up with all the people who constantly have to comment on things they think are stupid when they should stop derailing the topic. trust me i completely understand what i'm talking about.

if you dont like people commenting stupid things, then stop posting stupid things. Easy, no?

[Xanthurion2]

if you dont like people commenting stupid things, then stop posting stupid things. Easy, no?

i don't know. you tell me.

[Fluffybunny]

what is the world's obsession with making things smaller and smaller and wasting more and more money on useless crap?

He types into his computer...which is then communicated across the world on a backbone of high speed data pathways to high tech servers running the forum he contributes to...

Perhaps you would like to go back to a string and two dixie cups?

[Fluffybunny]

Those were the days Or when they were in kB

Cheers,

Badeskov

PS: One can never get too much HD space

I remember taking my 386 apart to upgrade it...going to the computer store and sinking ~300.00 for 2 sticks of ram...I think they were a whopping 1028k each. That system flew with 2 megs of ram and a 40 meg hard drive.

[badeskov]

I remember taking my 386 apart to upgrade it...going to the computer store and sinking ~300.00 for 2 sticks of ram...I think they were a whopping 1028k each. That system flew with 2 megs of ram and a 40 meg hard drive.

Scary indeed. An astounding 2MB of ram - amazing what you couldn't do with that back then.

Cheers,

Badeskov