After five years of work IBM scientists have discovered how to put a single data bit on to a surface of 12 atoms. On current magnetic storage devices the figure is over a million.
Computer World describes the implications of the breakthrough:
“Looking at this conservatively … instead of 1TB on a device you’d have 100TB to 150TB. Instead of being able to store all your songs on a drive, you’d be able to have all your videos on the device,” said Andreas Heinrich, IBM Research Staff Member and lead investigator on this project.
Computer World continues with a description of how the technology works.
While the science behind what IBM researchers accomplished is complex, the results are quite simple: They put a spin on the old adage that “opposites attract.”
Instead today’s method for magnetic storage where iron atoms are lined up with the same magnetic polarization, requiring greater distance between them, IBM created atoms with opposite magnetization, pulling them more tightly together.
“Moore’s Law is basically the drive of the industry to shrink components down little by little and then solve the engineering challenges that go along with that but keeping the basic concepts the same. The basic concepts of magnetic data storage or even transistors haven’t really changed over the past 20 years,” Heinrich said. “The ultimate end of Moore’s Law is a single atom. That’s where we come in.”
The experiments were carried out using a scanning tunneling microscope at about 1 degree Kelvin, around -272 °C (-458 °F).
Heinrich is quick to point out that the breakthrough is more theoretical than practical at this point; storage manufacturers aren’t going to build a storage devices that use a scanning tunneling microscope to switch bits back and forth to store data…
Heinrich predicted that devices using IBM’s new method of data storage would take five to 10 years to develop.
Computer World : IBM smashes Moore’s Law, cuts bit size to 12 atoms