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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

#51

Post by DenisM »

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.

RRR is the answer.

Redundancy, Redundancy, Redundancy.

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

#52

Post by skykooler »

smellf wrote: post #29

> Dr Otte reports read speeds of 1-2 minutes per block. He reckons he could boost those speeds drastically, to about a megabit per second. That would be a big improvement, but still thousands of times slower than modern hard drives. Try tens of times slower. There would absolutely be applications for nonvolatile memory that reads at 1 Mbps but has this kind of insane memory density. For most applications you'd probab…

Especially if you could make the read heads small enough that you could read from several atomic lattices in parallel.

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

#54

Post by jcranmer »

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 superconducting cryogenic magnets. Admittedly, a 100 MHz NMR requires only about 2-3T, which is close to what can be produced with a neodymium magnet, but you do get much, much noisier spectra.

With the larger field strengths, the need for magnetic field shielding pretty much restricts the ability to shrink it down to bench-scale machines.

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

#55

Post by flashingleds »

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 flash, if I crunched the numbers correctly). But it requires ultrahigh vacuum, preparation of a clean copper crystal, dosing with copper chloride and then writing/reading with a scanning tunneling microscope, maintaining liquid nitrogen temperature. Also a modern SSD will write about 500MB in a second, while this method would write 500MB in 240 years. I don't mean to slag it off; we should all appreciate it for being an absolutely wonderful and awe inspiring technical feat. Just don't get carried away dreaming of the applications in your laptop/server/phone.

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

#56

Post by saganus »

goldenkey wrote: post #6

This is pure buzz. Physical storage does not make any sense when light based or magnetic based storage is much faster and denser. It only makes sense if it is very permanent, ie. Etching sapphire discs [1] The position of atoms is just one classical property. Quantum properties like spin and charge are much more numerous and versatile. [1] http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/nanoform-laser-etched...

That sapphire disc tech is very interesting.

And while browsing their product sheet [1], I thought this would be great for me to store my most valuable stuff. And then it hit me... if I bought the 500 or even the 2500 document disc... what would I save there?

Probably some family pictures (unfortunately it doesn't seem to support colors, understandably so), a paper I published years ago. Maybe my college thesis. Legal documents perhaps like birth certificates and such.

But then I wished I could store music. Is there any graphical representation of music that would suit this format? Or is the only reasonable option to store the actual 1's and 0's of an MP3 or something like that?

[1] http://www.fahrenheit2451.com/index.php/shop

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

camelNotation wrote: post #28
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.

"Say what you want about cryonics but the storage part is proven technology" I've always wanted to say that cryonics as a field of study gives me indigestion. I would also like to say that all who study cryonics are villains and fiends. There. I said it. I feel so much better, thank you.

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

Sharlin wrote: post #20
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.

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.

> Say what you want about cryonics but the storage part is proven technology.

Seems like a good beginning to a Crichton novel.

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

#59

Post by [deleted] »

zeristor wrote: post #37
ISL wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-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!

Keep to the Kelvin. 20 times room temperature that is 300K is 6000K, as hot as the shining Sun.

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by MichailP »

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…

Could you recommend a good book about design and construction aspect of NMR, like design of coils, magnets? Thanks!
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