Terrifying news, kids: we're growing
seriously close to maxing out the density limits of present magnetic memory technology as it becomes increasingly difficult to shrink the necessary grains used in the process. Thankfully, there's a team of German scientists devoted to doing more than standing around and watching the inevitable happen. Cobalt, the element responsible for keeping your precious data intact, typically requires a 50,000 atom fleet for each grain, but boffins from Dresden have found a way to shrink that to a measly flotilla of 50. Without trampling you with technological details, attaching carbon rings to the cobalt reproduces the requisite hexagonal close packed structure, which leads to reduced space requirements. Should this technique prove viable, we can expect yet another race among hard drive makers as they strive to make each other's most capacious drives look downright diminutive. Hit the read link for all the grisly details.
[Via
Graphene-Info]
posted July 6th 2009 8:31AM
Don't care. Want solid state.
FTA "...improve the density of magnetic data storage, by around a thousand times. The data will also last much longer than is possible today."
In other words ~2 petabytes of highly reliable data in a 3.5" case. This has a lot to offer over SSDs for many applications.
SSD's are still going to be more expensive and less cost effective than what these drives could possibly introduce.
I'm more concerned with read/write speeds; hard-drives are cheap enough and large enough for me as they stand (although nothing wrong with more pr0n space, right?).
It's not as if this technology will be out commercially anytime soon. SSDs are just getting started, and there are about a dozen next-generation potential replacements to NAND Flash in the laboratory that are far faster, far denser, etc.
The future looks amazing. Now we just need to put all this future tech together and make something really amazing. I'd like to pair this up with a nice quantum CPU.
What exactly are you going to do with that quantum CPU? Do you even know what one does with a quantum computer?
@snakegriffin, faster servers for everything?
(or that project to find the perfect pie... mmm pie)
Download porn??
Quantum tech isn't something that's going to be used for everyday computing... it's to be used for very specific tasks. In other words, mainly in a coprocessor capability. The algorithms for quantum computation are quite different than the ones used for classical computing.
Hmm... I wanted to post something like: Comment about Pron in 3...2...1...
I guess I was a bit late for that, after andyupchurch already mentioned it.. It's kinda sad.
@snakegriffin
That's probably what they said about GPUs
@Karl W
No, that's no how it works. Quantum computers offer no advantages for traditional data processing.
And now I remember why I hated chemistry and PHYS 241.
Because you hate the idea of a petabyte hard disk?
Because I hated molecular geometry, current flow diagrams, ionization energy and electron affinity of particles.
Carbon rings, of course. You can achieve anything if it has carbon, ring, nano, or tube in the name.
what about onion rings?
i love onion rings...
Burgers and hot dogs, that's what you can do with onion rings.
Damn I'm hungry.
and all of them are carcinogens!
I just fixed the Engadget comment system using onion tubes.
Nobel prize, here I come!
"grizzly details"? there are bears involved?
I see what you did there.
Do you really see it? Here's what the oxford dictionary says on the subject:
Grisly and grizzly are often confused. Grisly means 'causing horror or revulsion', as in grisly crimes, whereas grizzly is chiefly used with reference to a kind of large American bear, and can also mean 'grey or grey-haired'.
Cool I can use this with the promised batteries that last 1000 times longer and have 10000 times the capacity.
...to play DNF.
But if you use Carbon, won't the elitist hippies get pissed and charge you for Carbon credits?
Ill say. Carbon, Ahhh global warming... stupid hippies!!!
Benzene? Does this mean that computers will smell from now on?
Wwhat, thank you for that accurate bit of information.
how much and will it give me cancer?
Only in the state of California.
Given the rapid rate of growth of OS and software bloat, this couldn't have happened soon enough.
Indeed, imagine how much more crapware we could be exposed to.
hey c'mon, Vista wasn't so bloated.
:-P
I for one welcome our new carbon benzene ring nano-cobalt carcinogen based quivering purple tube overlords... and crapware isn't bloat. It's added undocumented features designed to drive you to switch to Linux.
Just when you thought the industry was finally going to ditch the hard drive. :(
Gimme an Archos with one of these drives and the horsepower to be able to play anything from my MythVideo jukebox without modification.
"Density" is a tricky word. By shrinking the linear dimension of each "grain" by a factor of 10, the volumetric density improves by a factor of 1000. However, with hard drives, it's the /surface/ density that's important, thus the capacity would only improve by a factor of 100. Still a significant increase, but not as big.
Imagine a square platter that is 1 meter on each side. If your "grains" are cubes with sides of 10 cm, then you can fit 100 grains on the platter. If your grains are 1 cm, you can fit 10,000 on the platter. The height (depth) of the grains doesn't matter, it's how many you can pack onto the surface.