IBM somehow crammed data into a single atom

[opethian]

A hard drive today takes about 100,000 atoms to store a single bit of data -- a 1 or 0. The IBM Research results announced Wednesday show how much more densely it might someday be possible to cram information.
How much more densely? Today, you can fit your personal music library into a storage device the size of a penny. With IBM's technique, you could fit Apple's entire music catalog of 26 million songs onto the same area, Big Blue said.

IBM researcher Chris Lutz stands by a microscope he and colleagues used to store a bit of data on a single atom at IBM Research's Almaden campus.
IBM and Stan Olszewski/SOSKIphoto

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But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Big Blue's basic research into atomic-scale storage could be decades away from commercialization, said IBM researcher Chris Lutz.
"This work is not product development, but rather it is basic research intended to develop tools and understanding of what happens as we miniaturize devices down toward the ultimate limit of individual atom," Lutz said. "We are starting at individual atoms, and building up from there to invent new information technologies."
To make it practical, IBM would need to make atomic-scale storage economically manufacturable, fast at reading and writing data and stable enough to store data for long periods of time. IBM's atom stored data for the hours-long duration of the experiment, but real-world storage ideally would last years.

IBM can store a bit of data on a single atom, but the scanning tunneling microscope needed to do so is vastly larger. Here IBM microscope mechanic Bruce Melior stands by the device.
IBM and Stan Olszewski/SOSKIphoto​

IBM somehow crammed data into a single atom - CNET

 

[NaNoW]

IBM researcher Chris Lutz stands by a microscope he and colleagues used to store a bit of data on a single atom at IBM Research's Almaden campus.
IBM and Stan Olszewski/SOSKIphoto


IBM can store a bit of data on a single atom, but the scanning tunneling microscope needed to do so is vastly larger. Here IBM microscope mechanic Bruce Melior stands by the device.
IBM and Stan Olszewski/SOSKIphoto​

IBM somehow crammed data into a single atom - CNET

this is absolutely insane

along with this IBM plans to build the first commercially available universal quantum computer | Fox News

 

[Solid Link]

watching all these news makes me feel like as a country we'r light years behind of whats happening around the globe.. Wonder when we'l catch up..

 

[Benighted]

IBM will always be my favourite technology company. They're geniuses.

 

[mac007]

Great work by IBM.... they invest very much on R&D and get amazing results