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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

#41

Post by [deleted] »

ISL wrote: post #33
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…

-269 and -196 C understate the achievement. 4K and 77K are the same temperatures in absolute units. The warmer experiment is twenty times hotter than the colder one. For comparison in human terms, 20x hotter than room temperature is ~5700 C. Edit: Mmm. Morning math mistakes. Thanks!

[deleted]

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

#42

Post by choicewords »

dekhn wrote: post #13
dexwiz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genetic storage is way more resistant to bit rot than conventional computers. DNA is not stable, has a full time support system fixing it, and still has a relatively high mutation rate. But biological systems on the whole are much more resistant to individual errors. Yes, single mutations can cause horrible diseases, but these mutations are either in the active site of proteins, or disrupt folding. A large portion of…

DNA kept cool and dry is stable for millenia. Any storage done with DNA would likely be done in a fixed environment outside of the cell.

I thought natural radioactive decay was sufficient to mangle DNA.

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

#43

Post by dekhn »

choicewords wrote: post #42
dekhn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNA kept cool and dry is stable for millenia. Any storage done with DNA would likely be done in a fixed environment outside of the cell.

I thought natural radioactive decay was sufficient to mangle DNA.

minimal shielding and non-radioactive storage elements suffice.

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

#44

Post by moreati »

saganus wrote: post #30
nik61 wrote: post #3

http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/Ms_fnd_in_a_Lbry.html

Wow! Excellent read!. It's even more impressive since the footnote says: "This story first appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1961" Fifty-five years ago! It reminds me of a recent hn article (if anyone has a link it would be great!) that I believe it was about how Dropbox tests it's storage system, layer by layer, and the final error graph is always a flat line at "0", since every error…

Perhaps it was https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/07/pocket-watch/ ?

    > we use a variant on Reed-Solomon erasure coding that is similar to Local Reconstruction Codes
    > according to this model, a given block in Magic Pocket is safe with 99.9999999999999999999999999% probability!

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

#45

Post by stcredzero »

restalis wrote: post #31
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…

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.

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

#46

Post by stcredzero »

ska wrote: post #27
Sharlin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an existing engineering discipline centered around keeping a lot of precious fragile data at liquid nitrogen temperatures for decades without malfunction. Say what you want about cryonics but the storage part is proven technology.

As I understand it the tract record isn't actually that good.

track

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

#47

Post by abecedarius »

stephanheijl wrote: post #7

While this is very intesting, the storage mentioned does seem somewhat small to me. The article compares the area covered by the text to be a little smaller than a HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus). However, the genome of HIV apparently stores approximately 9.2kb (kilo basepairs, not kilobytes, so ~18KiB) of information. It also doesn't need to be kept at -196C. Are there any viable tactics for atom-based storage th…

There was a paper in the last few years proposing to make DNA a practical mass-storage technology, as the last and slowest level of the hierarchy. It'd need lots of error correction, and to be chunked up into small-enough strings to synthesize, and each string would need to carry address bits to match on (unless you want a content-addressable store). But IIRC the storage density and the cost trends made it at least kind of plausible.

And of course there's http://e-drexler.com/d/06/00/Nanosystems/toc.html chapter 12.

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

#48

Post by skykooler »

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.

Boiloff could even be used as a second-stage refrigerant to cool the rest of the datacenter.

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

#49

Post by skykooler »

choicewords wrote: post #42
dekhn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNA kept cool and dry is stable for millenia. Any storage done with DNA would likely be done in a fixed environment outside of the cell.

I thought natural radioactive decay was sufficient to mangle DNA.

Same for other storage devices.

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

#50

Post by saganus »

moreati wrote: post #44
saganus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! Excellent read!. It's even more impressive since the footnote says: "This story first appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1961" Fifty-five years ago! It reminds me of a recent hn article (if anyone has a link it would be great!) that I believe it was about how Dropbox tests it's storage system, layer by layer, and the final error graph is always a flat line at "0", since every error…

Perhaps it was https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/07/pocket-watch/ ? > we use a variant on Reed-Solomon erasure coding that is similar to Local Reconstruction Codes > according to this model, a given block in Magic Pocket is safe with 99.9999999999999999999999999% probability!

Awesome! Yes, exactly that.

I tried searching for "petabyte" but I guess I came 1 order of magnitude short...

Thanks a lot! It was driving me crazy..

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