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Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

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Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#111

Post by bscphil »

dTal wrote: post #88
theclaw wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems more like five degrees of freedom than five dimensions.

What's the distinction? Wikipedia seems to think there isn't one: "In mathematics, the dimension of an object is, roughly speaking, the number of degrees of freedom of a point that moves on this object." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimension

The difference is that people don't read the titles of press releases with pre-conceived notions of what a degree of freedom is, so it's not as useful for making clickbait.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#112

Post by notacoward »

There's a long and mostly bad history of claims around 3D storage. About twenty years ago I followed a company called Constellation 3D, later Terastor. They made many strikingly similar claims, smaller absolute numbers but a similar multiplier vs. what was already in the market. At least they only claimed three dimensions. I can sort of accept orientation as an effective fourth dimension, but size seems like a real stretch. In any case, C3D/Terastor struggled along for a few years, with more claims and more excuses, before they turned into the predictable smoking crater. I've seen several more just like them come and go since then, so I think I'll wait for more concrete proof that this particular technology can work at scale in the real world instead of just once in a lab.

BTW, if you want to go even further back, who else remembers the promises about bubble memory?

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#113

Post by PietdeVries »

YayamiOmate wrote: post #18

I dunno, but it seems to me universities increasingly focus on press releases and marketing departments... 5D and 13.8 billion years? Phony. I know no sane scientist or enigneer that would say they use more than 3D physics. Sounds like catch phrases to sell. With such logic plain old HDD is at least 4D, because it uses CHS coordinates and magnetic orientation, to store data. To me such communication style undermines…

What bothers me even more is the precision of time they can keep the data: 13.8 billion years. Not 13.7, not 13.9 - no: they figured out 13.8 exactly. That's fake precision and remarkably close to the current age of the universe...

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#114

Post by im3w1l »

dosshell wrote: post #38
YayamiOmate wrote: post #18

I dunno, but it seems to me universities increasingly focus on press releases and marketing departments... 5D and 13.8 billion years? Phony. I know no sane scientist or enigneer that would say they use more than 3D physics. Sounds like catch phrases to sell. With such logic plain old HDD is at least 4D, because it uses CHS coordinates and magnetic orientation, to store data. To me such communication style undermines…

Just speculating, but if you can index in 5 dimensions to get your data, should it not be called 5D? data = read_bit(x, y, z, yaw, size) But i agree, i would appreciate more information if they are going to use buzz-words.

With 1d data storage I can double the length to double the capacity.

With 2d I can double the length or width to double the capacity.

With 3d I can double the length width or height to double capacity.

That's why 3d storage is interesting.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#115

Post by totaldude87 »

This keeps repeating every few years i guess.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/16/11018018/5d-data-storage-...

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/160928-five-dimensional-...

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/92892-five-dimensional-g...

or did we capture its evolution :)

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#116

Post by mapcars »

orbital-decay wrote: post #54
toyg wrote: post #45

Seems a bit of a waste to dedicate an entire 360TB disc to a single text document like a bible, which is probably just a few KBs... /s More seriously, they don't talk about reading capabilities (retrieval speed etc). And what if it gets scratched? What is the error tolerance? At that density, a single speck of dust could have dramatic implications... I hope this reaches industrial viability, because we desperately ne…

Yeah, actual museum-grade archival is so much more than just having an aging-resistant media. You also need to be able to read and decode it many years into the future, which is really tricky to guarantee - you can't assume the future generations will know how to make a reading device and remember your formats/encodings. So it's a bit like unzip.zip problem.

>You also need to be able to read and decode it many years into the future, which is really tricky to guarantee

Not really, those future people don't just come out of nowhere. It's a gradual, incremental change as there are still systems using tape storage the technology or formats are not lost but migrated.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#117

Post by bluGill »

hyperbovine wrote: post #48
YayamiOmate wrote: post #18

I dunno, but it seems to me universities increasingly focus on press releases and marketing departments... 5D and 13.8 billion years? Phony. I know no sane scientist or enigneer that would say they use more than 3D physics. Sounds like catch phrases to sell. With such logic plain old HDD is at least 4D, because it uses CHS coordinates and magnetic orientation, to store data. To me such communication style undermines…

> I dunno, but it seems to me universities increasingly focus on press releases and marketing departments... A byproduct of public disinvestment in higher ed. Nowadays, you've got to show the taxpayers, and donors, where their money goes. Which is not all bad in my opinion.

There is a lot of investment in higher ed. Everybody wants more of the limited resources available. Since resources are limited the natural result is marketing trying to show you are worth more.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#119

Post by lvh »

PietdeVries wrote: post #113
YayamiOmate wrote: post #18

I dunno, but it seems to me universities increasingly focus on press releases and marketing departments... 5D and 13.8 billion years? Phony. I know no sane scientist or enigneer that would say they use more than 3D physics. Sounds like catch phrases to sell. With such logic plain old HDD is at least 4D, because it uses CHS coordinates and magnetic orientation, to store data. To me such communication style undermines…

What bothers me even more is the precision of time they can keep the data: 13.8 billion years. Not 13.7, not 13.9 - no: they figured out 13.8 exactly. That's fake precision and remarkably close to the current age of the universe...

Yes, 13.8Gy is the approximate age of the universe and yes the researchers used that number. But it's not like they made this up and conveniently landed there!

Turns out the biggest decay factor is nanograting and the biggest contributing physical quantity is temperature. They plotted what decay would look like on an Arrhenius plot. They both computed estimates and measured to confirm: the measurements are quite accurate. The specific claim is that they computed that at a specific temperature (462K) the medium will last 13.8Gy: their point is that it would last as long as the age of the universe at that temperature. They could've picked any other point on the time/temp scale, like "here's how long it would last at room temperature".

They did not, however, simply make up a number with no justification, let alone commit straight-up academic fraud.

The actual paper is here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297892219_Eternal_5...

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#120

Post by klez »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #105
toyg wrote: post #45

Seems a bit of a waste to dedicate an entire 360TB disc to a single text document like a bible, which is probably just a few KBs... /s More seriously, they don't talk about reading capabilities (retrieval speed etc). And what if it gets scratched? What is the error tolerance? At that density, a single speck of dust could have dramatic implications... I hope this reaches industrial viability, because we desperately ne…

What if HDD platter gets scratched? What if SSD memory gets scratched? What if gets ?

Those are not touted as a very-long-term archival solution. This one is.
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