IBM Achieve Breakthrough In Data Storage Density

IBM Research have announced that they can now store one bit of data on 12 atoms.

That level of data density could turn today’s typical desktop into a monster with 100 terabytes of hard disc space and 4 terabytes of memory.

ZDnet explains that the technique used by researchers at IBM’s Almaden labs in California is based on antiferromagnetism, the reverse of traditional ferromagnetism where each atom’s magnetic force is lined up with its neighbours creating a large readable magnetic force from millions of atoms. Antiferromagnets cancel each other out so you can spell out one bit of data using only a dozen atoms but you have to use a different method – a scanning and tunnelling microscope (STM) to read it. That makes this technology impractical for the time being and confines it to the lab.

Another limitation is temperature. The 12 atom density is only achievable at temperatures just above absolute zero. However a very respectable 150 atom per bit density can be achieved at room temperature.

Despite these drawbacks it seems likely we will be seeing devices with significantly more data capacity in the not too distant future.

Is that a surprise?

Back in the early eighties I worked for a company that sold business computers. Back then a 5 MB hard disk was a real luxury that came in only the top end machines. I remember the excitement when we saw our first 10MB hard disk. It arrived in its own cabinet about the size of a tower case PC. A gigabyte was an astonishing hypothetical landmark in the realm of science fiction… but of course that came and went. My latest PC came with a terabyte hard disk and I could have picked 1.5TBs!

So it’s hard to know whether to be astounded or blasé about the prospect of hard drives carrying 100 times more data than the current, though its not hard to guess what we’ll do with it. It’ll still get filled with spam!

However, in Steve Hamm’s post about the breakthrough for ASmarterPlanet.com, he points out that IBM’s nanotech research project is about, not just the passive storage of data, but quantum processing with atoms holding data and performing operations simultaneously.

And that would, as IBM research team leader Andreas Heinrich says, “be a game changer”.

Image: CORE-materials