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Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]

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Re: Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]

#11

The idea of buffering data by transmitting it somewhere far, bouncing it off a moon or whatnot, and using that distance of radio waves as your memory is my favourite thing ever.

In Conway's Game of Life, the first self-constructing machine used this principle. It has two construction arms, and the recipe for them to create new copies of themselves is encoded in gliders and bounced back-and-forth between them. This turned out to be much simpler than building any kind of storage device.

https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Gemini

Re: Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]

#12

The idea of buffering data by transmitting it somewhere far, bouncing it off a moon or whatnot, and using that distance of radio waves as your memory is my favourite thing ever.

Sort of like a really, really long delay-line memory tube, it's just mostly-vacuum instead of mostly-mercury...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory

Re: Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]

#13

The idea of buffering data by transmitting it somewhere far, bouncing it off a moon or whatnot, and using that distance of radio waves as your memory is my favourite thing ever.

Used to be a common thing for storing analog signals in the past :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory

Re: Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]

#14

The idea of buffering data by transmitting it somewhere far, bouncing it off a moon or whatnot, and using that distance of radio waves as your memory is my favourite thing ever.

Delay-line memory used this concept in a variety of ways, such as by bouncing slow sound waves around a chamber and by transmitting twists along a long coiled wire.

Re: Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]

#15

The idea of buffering data by transmitting it somewhere far, bouncing it off a moon or whatnot, and using that distance of radio waves as your memory is my favourite thing ever.

Except access times are not so good, generally.

Re: Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]

#19

The idea of buffering data by transmitting it somewhere far, bouncing it off a moon or whatnot, and using that distance of radio waves as your memory is my favourite thing ever.

Sort of like a really, really long delay-line memory tube, it's just mostly-vacuum instead of mostly-mercury... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory

OTOH, you’d be building one of the largest computers in the solar system. Count me in.
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