Ready to have your storage world rocked again? It seems like we're all just getting up to speed on
SSDs and their, erm, unique
behavior, but the upstart DataSlide pledges to make all that as obsolete as last year's platters. The company is developing what it calls "Massive 2D Parallel Storage Technology," which effectively takes the spinning disk of a standard HDD and turns it into a two-sided rectangular plate. That plate then slides in between two surfaces containing arrays of read/write heads, one head per sector. With no arms to zip around DataSlide is projecting up to 160,000 operations per second and 500MB/s transfer rates, numbers that blow even the fastest SSDs out of the water, and power consumption of less than four watts. That the heads and the storage are actually making physical contact
all the time is disconcerting, but a diamond coating pledges "years of worry free service." Yes, diamonds, the things able to scratch just about anything else on the planet -- sounds like a great lubricant to us. While it'll be years before these things slide to retail, with Oracle on board hopefully this tech has enough backing to actually get there.
[Via
ZDNet]
posted Jun 18th 2009 8:24AM
Really nice!
SSDs aren't completely solid either, you have electrons moving in them! (they have mass too)
bio gel pack storage FTW!
Years from now SSDs or (hopefully racetrack memory) > this.
More head is something I endorse.
However, a cursory glance reveals inelegance, and lots of it.
...until I see a working sample and cost projections.
I'm all for spinning platters and overhyped Flash memory going the way of the dodo, ready to be replaced with something finer. But I suspect this isn't it.
Regards,
Stingy Slush Fund Manager
I stopped reading at "More head is something I endorse."
Mass market memristors > all I think.
Hmm, piezo controlled movement of 250 µm eh, interesting concept, why can't they just put ridges or even ballbearings on the edges though and thus avoid actual contact with the working surfaces, might reduce some issues like wearing and heat and errors.
Although then rigidity would become very important I guess.
Actually, I think they are on to something here.
As I see it, using ball bearings or ridges along the edges to separate the plates from each others would complicate things considerably and drive the production costs through the roof. Using sheets of artificial diamond to act as insulation and bearing is in my mind a stroke of genius. Not only is diamond a excellent heat transfer medium but it's also incredible durable so if the sheets are perfect without a single imperfection I don't see a reason why it shouldn't run well for years, even decades without breaking down.
This is like brute-force engineering!
I can't even imagine how ungodly expensive this will be, especially when holographic storage is already being developed. I could, however, see a niche use of this in something critical like a satellite or submarine - where part replacement may not be an option. It's like the floating volcano island fortress of hard drives!
Diamonds also have an almost frictionless surface, so that is why they would be good also. So hard, frictionless, highly thermal conductive, and highly electrical insulatator all combine for an interesting material in diamond.
@Xenoterranos
expensive? naah, it won't be expensive to manufacture. Artificial diamonds are produced in bulk, is dirt cheap and is 100% pure carbon which is this planet most abundant resource.
So, three sheets of diamond glass, a piezo actuator and a little control logic is all that takes to make one of these. the most expensive part of the process would be to graft semi-conductors into the surface of the glass, much like LCD's are produced and we all know how cheap they are these days. so no, it won't be that expensive. I recon.. ^^
@Suijin
ahh yeah, I forgot about that.
So yeah, using diamond in this is a stroke of genius :)
I didn't say it would be expensive to manufacture, I said it would be expensive, period. Since when does the component cost of anything in this industry have a correlation to it's price? Hell, all you need to "make" a modern IC is silicon and light!
Hmmmm a magnetic card that stores memory....picture this....Dayton, Ohio 1960's and NCR pioneers CRAM or Card ramdon Access Memory. A read head per every track ?.....once again picture this.....NCR and CDI pioneer HPT (Head Per Track) Hard Drives. Geezzz....seems what's old is new.
You're right, it is an old idea but much have happened in the five decades since it was first conceived.
Today, thanks to Moore's Law and chip makers striving to follow that law nano technology is a blooming business and it allows us to revisit those old ideas and improve them thousandfold.
Nice nice nice.
The day I give up my magnetic tape is going to be sad.
"The main investor in the upstart Dataslide is famed diamond retailer Swarovski diamonds."
Honestly, no one has made this joke yet? I'm disappointed in you, Engadget.
...don't they deal with crystal?
They sure do.
Swarovski sells "crystal" products AKA special cut glass. Nothing to do with diamonds..
after diamonds, something as simple as water
Then i have to worry about my data evaporating!! Yay!!
Isn't neuron-network storage on the horizon and make this obsolete by the time it takes off?
Neural; sorry
neural-network storage? You mean like your brain? :)
kidding aside, artificial neural-networks (ANN) are used in data processing/pattern recognition. I'm never heard of a storage device utilizing the concept...
So far there's only one thing diamonds can't scratch, carbon nanotubes. Diamonds are the hardest natural substance, and about 15 times harder than the next hardest substance - moissanite - which is mostly synthetic, and known as carborundum. (Teeny natural moissanite crystals are found in meteorites.) But then I'm betting these diamonds are synthetic, created via carbon vapor deposition.
Swarosvski also makes some of the best binoculars, much less expensive than the best - Leica.
"..1 head per sector.."
that drive would need a HELL of a lot of heads...
@Cheng
The HTHP method used to create industrial micro-diamonds is relatively inexpensive.
However, the plasma deposition technique needed to produce a surface as uniform as this requires isn't cheap at all.
Nudge me when I can get one of these at Newegg. Until then it's just talk.