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Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

economist.com

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Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#61

Post by wamatt »

stcredzero wrote: post #45
restalis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atomic level storage does not have to necessarily be brought to the common liquid water temperature range user. There is a lot of massive storage demand from parties that are not necessarily interested to get in touch with the physical storage medium itself. These would benefit right here and now as soon as the technology could be mass-produced.

Atomic level storage does not have to necessarily be brought to the common liquid water temperature range user. I think there are plenty of data centers that could learn to deal handily with liquid nitrogen temp cooling equipment.

Indeed, reducing 100 datacenter cabinets to one or two, seems like an attractive economic incentive.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#62

Post by tener »

jcranmer wrote: post #54
dexwiz wrote: post #8

From -269ºC to -196ºC is actually a huge improvement. Its the difference between liquid helium (expensive) to liquid nitrogen (cheap). Getting something that cold is hard, but keeping it there is just a matter of insulation. There seems to be a different kind of physics when you get that cold. Stable single atom structures, superconducting magnets, etc. It's all based around the idea that nanometer structures are now…

> I was once interning for a chemist, and asked if he ever thought we would have desktop NMR machines. He said there was no way they would ever be small enough. I then pointed at his laptop and remarked that is what people thought about computers 50 years ago. Good-resolution NMR requires high frequencies and high magnetic fields. A 900 MHz NMR would use around 20 T--which is strong enough to pretty much require supe…

Perhaps in 50 years we will have superconducting magnets at room temperature?

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#64

Post by soundwave106 »

jcranmer wrote: post #54
dexwiz wrote: post #8

From -269ºC to -196ºC is actually a huge improvement. Its the difference between liquid helium (expensive) to liquid nitrogen (cheap). Getting something that cold is hard, but keeping it there is just a matter of insulation. There seems to be a different kind of physics when you get that cold. Stable single atom structures, superconducting magnets, etc. It's all based around the idea that nanometer structures are now…

> I was once interning for a chemist, and asked if he ever thought we would have desktop NMR machines. He said there was no way they would ever be small enough. I then pointed at his laptop and remarked that is what people thought about computers 50 years ago. Good-resolution NMR requires high frequencies and high magnetic fields. A 900 MHz NMR would use around 20 T--which is strong enough to pretty much require supe…

There is indeed actually such a thing as "benchtop NMRs" (like Picospin, Spinsolve, etc. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchtop_nuclear_magnetic_reso...) but as you say they operate at a much lower resolution.

(My understanding is that these machines came on the market for certain applications where the low resolution wasn't as much of a problem as other things like affordability or portability.)

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#66

Post by the8472 »

coldcode wrote: post #15
dexwiz wrote: post #8

From -269ºC to -196ºC is actually a huge improvement. Its the difference between liquid helium (expensive) to liquid nitrogen (cheap). Getting something that cold is hard, but keeping it there is just a matter of insulation. There seems to be a different kind of physics when you get that cold. Stable single atom structures, superconducting magnets, etc. It's all based around the idea that nanometer structures are now…

The problem I see is what happens if the temperature doesn't stay in the required range for whatever reason like power failures, earthquakes, sloppy maintenance - you lose the data. Having such an enormous storage that is so fragile seems to have limited usefulness. If they ever get it to room temperature and have it be stabile then it might be more interesting.

Not a problem if you can move your data center to the kuiper belt, there it will be stable at ambient temperature.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#67

Post by ridgeguy »

jcranmer wrote: post #54
dexwiz wrote: post #8

From -269ºC to -196ºC is actually a huge improvement. Its the difference between liquid helium (expensive) to liquid nitrogen (cheap). Getting something that cold is hard, but keeping it there is just a matter of insulation. There seems to be a different kind of physics when you get that cold. Stable single atom structures, superconducting magnets, etc. It's all based around the idea that nanometer structures are now…

> I was once interning for a chemist, and asked if he ever thought we would have desktop NMR machines. He said there was no way they would ever be small enough. I then pointed at his laptop and remarked that is what people thought about computers 50 years ago. Good-resolution NMR requires high frequencies and high magnetic fields. A 900 MHz NMR would use around 20 T--which is strong enough to pretty much require supe…

You were right to use that computer as an example.

Here's an MRI probe that's quite literally microscopic. Fig 1 says it's about 3.5µm in diameter. [1]

[1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.04238v2.pdf

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#68

Post by Dylan16807 »

flashingleds wrote: post #55

This is because it just got published in Nature something, the earlier open arXiv version from April is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.02265 Figure 3 is absolutely spectacular, and deserves to be admired by the whole world. A comment on the inevitable promises of revolutionized data storage: Yes the areal density is fantastically high (>500Tbit / square inch as opposed to 1Tbit/in^2 in bleeding edge HDDs / NAND fla…

Pretty cool, but keep in mind that it's at a massive scalability disadvantage compared to flash because of the requirement for a read/write head. Current 3D flash may only be 1.7Tbpsi, but that's with a layer 4 microns thick. Make it a millimeter thick and you're in the same areal density range.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#69

Post by Dylan16807 »

coldcode wrote: post #15
dexwiz wrote: post #8

From -269ºC to -196ºC is actually a huge improvement. Its the difference between liquid helium (expensive) to liquid nitrogen (cheap). Getting something that cold is hard, but keeping it there is just a matter of insulation. There seems to be a different kind of physics when you get that cold. Stable single atom structures, superconducting magnets, etc. It's all based around the idea that nanometer structures are now…

The problem I see is what happens if the temperature doesn't stay in the required range for whatever reason like power failures, earthquakes, sloppy maintenance - you lose the data. Having such an enormous storage that is so fragile seems to have limited usefulness. If they ever get it to room temperature and have it be stabile then it might be more interesting.

> power failures, earthquakes, sloppy maintenance

Which could cause you to lose room-temperature storage too.

Take advantage of the density and put your data into 6 data centers instead of 3. It'll survive fine.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#70

Post by breischl »

the8472 wrote: post #66
coldcode wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see is what happens if the temperature doesn't stay in the required range for whatever reason like power failures, earthquakes, sloppy maintenance - you lose the data. Having such an enormous storage that is so fragile seems to have limited usefulness. If they ever get it to room temperature and have it be stabile then it might be more interesting.

Not a problem if you can move your data center to the kuiper belt, there it will be stable at ambient temperature.

As long as moving your read/write head around doesn't generate more heat than you can radiate away...
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