7 replies to this topic

[flyingfisch]

http://www.ibm.com/s...ale_memory.html

Apparently, a bit would be determined by the orientation of the 12 atoms. Definitely reaching the 1-bit-per-atom theoretical limit.

[MicroPro]

Pretty amazing, and is more amazing if you think we can one day control sub-atom particles too.

[flyingfisch]

Pretty amazing, and is more amazing if you think we can one day control sub-atom particles too.

Yeah, actually it got me to thinking about whether you could take it down to an atom size but then somehow store more information than a bit by giving it a higher base.... not sure how it would be done, but maybe you could make different elements represent different numbers or something.

[MicroPro]

Maybe it's worth knowing that they wanted to do multi-level logic even before inventing binary digits. The mathematical parts are already invented, but not applied; at least with electrical current and voltage it's not trivial to implement.

[Forty-Two]

Wow, this is really interesting. Hopefully it will hit the market in the next 10 years.

[flyingfisch]

Wow, this is really interesting. Hopefully it will hit the market in the next 10 years.

Yeah, hopefully, we'll have to see.

I actually find it kind of interesting to note that it is only ~160 times denser than NAND... for some reason I thought it would be denser than that.

Another thing, I wonder if these will be more or less reliable than other hard drives. And another question is how fast it would be.

[MicroPro]

It's not something new, it has been always researched on. The problem is, you'll need much more components to store and keep one cell of n-ary value than you need in a binary circuit.

[flyingfisch]

Ah, I see. Actually, I wonder if it would be ready for personal use any time soon since it would essentially need an electron microscope built into it to operate.