IBM Brains Turn 12 Atoms Into World’s Smallest Storage Bit

[The Straight Story]

IBM Brains Turn 12 Atoms Into World’s Smallest Storage Bit

IBM researchers have found a way to put a single bit of data on a 12-atom surface, creating the world’s smallest magnetic storage device.

It’s a breakthrough that’s not likely to make its way into hard drives or memory sticks for decades, but it gives us a hint at how much road lies ahead for magnetic storage devices.

Before now, physicists really didn’t know how small they could take magnetic storage before the laws of quantum mechanics would take over, making it impossible to reliably store data. String together 8 atoms, for example, and you simply can’t get a stable magnetic state, says Andreas Heinrich, the IBM researcher behind the discovery. “The system will just spontaneously hop from one of those states to another state in a timescale that is too fast for us to claim anything like a data storage [demonstration]. It might be switching 1,000 times per second.”

Another problem: how to keep neighboring bits of data from interfering with each other? Today’s hard drives store data in what’s known as a ferromagnetic structure. This is how a compass needle or a refrigerator magnet work: They have lots of atoms lumped together, all pointing in the same magnetic directions.



http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/01/ibm-scientists/

[HopeHoops]

1. Well for ROM at least they've done far better in image mapping.

Using a crystal as a holographic storage device, you can pump a shitload of images into a small space. A reference signal (laser) combined with an image signal (also laser) will produce a match if the image is in the crystal. The stronger the match, the clearer the output. So far the only application I know of in current use is for matching finger prints. I've seen it in use and it's really weird to watch.

It's a non-determinate storage structure so it isn't applicable (yet) for binary storage, but it's damn fast and accurate. If they can make it R/W capable and find a way to reliably store determinate data, the storage capability is analogous to thinking about terabyte drives when all we had were single sided 5 1/4" floppies that held under 200K.

That's a great picture by the way.

[roguevalley]

2. its cute too. :)