High Capacity Media "millipede"

[Hironiemus]

I found this German article about a new storage medium called Millipede researched by IBM:

http://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/56525/0

You can storage about 500 GBits at a room of just 1 square inch

And it's useable as a flash-like storage medium as well as a normal (HDD) medium.

Here is an shorter english version with just the specifications of this thingy:

http://domino.research.ibm.com/tchjr/journ...4a?OpenDocument

Anyways I'm looking forward to download the internet to my harddrive in 5 years or so

[Silvadragon]

WTF? English please?

I'm tech savy, but WTF? i don't understand what they mean!

Heres what i mean

THe english version:

We report on a new atomic force microscope (AFM)-based data storage concept called the “Millipede” that has a potentially ultrahigh density, terabit capacity, small form factor, and high data rate. Its potential for ultrahigh storage density has been demonstrated by a new thermomechanical local-probe technique to store and read back data in very thin polymer films. With this new technique, 30­40-nm-sized bit indentations of similar pitch size have been made by a single cantilever/tip in a thin (50-nm) polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) layer, resulting in a data storage density of 400­500 Gb/in.2 High data rates are achieved by parallel operation of large two-dimensional (2D) AFM arrays that have been batch-fabricated by silicon surface-micromachining techniques. The very large scale integration (VLSI) of micro/nanomechanical devices (cantilevers/tips) on a single chip leads to the largest and densest 2D array of 32 x 32 (1024) AFM cantilevers with integrated write/read storage functionality ever built. Time-multiplexed electronics control the write/read storage cycles for parallel operation of theMillipede array chip. Initial areal densities of 100­200 Gb/in.2 have been achieved with the 32 × 32 array chip, which has potential for further improvements. In addition to data storage in polymers or other media, and not excluding magnetics, we envision areas in nanoscale science and technology such as lithography, high-speed/large-scale imaging, molecular and atomic manipulation, and many others in which Millipede may open up new perspectives and opportunities.

Words?

thermomechanical local-probe

AFM cantilevers

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Edited May 4, 2005 by Silvadragon

[hobgoblin]

its kinda like the old record player that used bumps to record analog audio, but this uses a 1 atom "needle" to register and create pits in a digital grip pattern by moving individual atoms.

basicly you have a row of needles that are dragged along the surface, registrering the small pits when reading.

the thing is that i think this can be put into a housing similar to todays chips, and is fully RW able.