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New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

Posted May 27, 2009 9:28 AM

From ScienceDaily LLC:

Packing more digital images, music, and other data onto silicon chips in USB drives and smart phones is like squeezing more strawberries into the same size supermarket carton. The denser you pack, the quicker it spoils. The 10 to 100 gigabits of data per square inch on today's memory cards has an estimated life expectancy of only 10 to 30 years. And the electronics industry needs much greater data densities for tomorrow's iPods, smart phones, and other devices. Scientists are reporting an advance toward remedying this situation with a new computer memory device that can store thousands of times more data than conventional silicon chips with an estimated lifetime of more than one billion years. Their discovery is scheduled for publication in the June 10 issue of the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters, a monthly journal. Alex Zettl and colleagues note in the new study that some of today's highest-density experimental storage media can retain ultra-dense data for only a fraction of a second. They note that William the Conqueror's Doomsday Book, written on vellum in 1086 AD, has survived 900 years. However, the medium used for a digital version of the book, encoded in 1986, failed within 20 years.

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The Engineer
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#1

Re: New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

05/27/2009 2:17 PM

I'm not trying to be cute here, but 1 Terabyte per square inch doesn't seem very realistic. I mean, by the time this is commercial people will be expecting Petabyte memory and they're not gonna want it from a 1000 inch x 1000 inch wafer.

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Anonymous Poster
#2
In reply to #1

Re: New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

05/27/2009 7:30 PM

Roger,

Point taken, but at a storage density of 1 TB per square inch, you would only need a 32" x 32" wafer to achieve 1 PB of storage. Don't know what one would ever need 1 PB of storage for, but I believe Bill Gates also remarked several years ago that no one would ever be able to use 1 MB of storage either!

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The Engineer
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#3
In reply to #2

Re: New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

05/27/2009 8:53 PM

You're right of course, a 32"x32" wafer, still big (I have no excuse for my slip-up there beyond carelessness).

As for needing 1 PB, I'm sure they'll think of something. 3D stuff will probably chew up a ton of memory, ever improving video standards, etc.

Probably more likely a demand for 1 TB RAM in the short term for running programs.

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#4
In reply to #3

Re: New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

05/27/2009 11:58 PM

Oh boy, we are coming around full circle on media miniaturisation. LP record sized media discs anyone?

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#5

Re: New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

05/28/2009 5:08 AM

I'm not using any of this stuff until they show me that it stores for at least a milllion years!

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Guru

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#6
In reply to #5

Re: New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

05/28/2009 11:13 AM

The test plan is

1) Store information on the device

2) put in time capsule labeled ("Do not open until year 1,002,009")

3) Instructions inside (on paper) to read "go back in time 1 million years and demonstrate information is in tact. Show the people of the past how to travel to the future.

4) Put the results of this demonstration back into the time capsule.

5) If verified, use device to store the results of this test and travel to the future (see step 3) to begin using it.

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Anonymous Poster
#7

Re: New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

05/28/2009 12:56 PM

Hey, then you will be able to actually back up Vista on a flash stick instead of 6 DVDs!!!

Steve

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