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Hey [you]! If you haven't noticed, this is now the old digibutter forums. Go over to the new site!
digibutter.nerr
It's Hi-Technicaaal!
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Jr. Troopa
Admiral Bobbery
Joined: 19 Jun 2007
Posts: 3866
HP: 15 MP: 2 Lives: 0
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 Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 6:37 pm
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An article from Times Online, describes this new chip:
| Times Online wrote: | Mobile phones, iPods and other consumer devices may soon be able to hold a hundred times more information than they do at present thanks to a breakthrough in storage technology.
Scientists at IBM say they have developed a new type of digital storage which would enable a device such as an MP3 player to store about half a million songs - or 3,500 films - and cost far less to produce.
In a paper published in the current issue of Science, a team at the company's research centre in San Jose, California, said that devices which use the new technology would require much less power, would run on a single battery charge for "weeks at a time", and would last for decades.
So-called 'racetrack' memory uses the 'spin' of an electron to store data, and can operate far more quickly than regular hard drives.
Like flash memory - the most advanced type of memory for small devices such as mobile phones - it has no moving parts, meaning that the problems associated with mechanical reliability are dramatically reduced.
Unlike flash, however, it can 'write data' - or store information - extremely quickly, and does not have the 'wear out' mechanism that means flash memory drives can only be used a few thousand times before they wear out.
"The promise of racetrack memory - for example, the ability to carry massive amounts of information in your pocket - could unleash creativity leading to devices and applications that nobody has imagined yet," Stuart Parkin, the IBM fellow who led the research, said.
At present the most capacious iPod - the 160GB iPod Classic - can store 40,000 songs.
Dr Parkin said that racetrack memory could lead to the development of 'three-dimensional micro-electronics', breaking with the tradition of scientists trying to fit an ever greater number on transistors on an ultra-thin piece of silicon shaped like a wafer.
"The combination of extraordinarily interesting physics and spintronic materials engineering, one atomic layer at a time, continues to be highly challenging and very rewarding," he said.
The breakthrough also potentially paves the way for a radical re-writing of one of the most basic laws of computing - so-called Moore's Law, the maxim coined in 1965 by the co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, according to which computing speed doubles roughly every two years.
In September, Mr Moore himself said that the continued application of his law would come up against some fundamental laws of physics by about 2020 - laws which forced Mr Parkin and his team to rethink how silicon chips operate.
For nearly fifty years, scientists have explored the possibility of storing information inside the walls that exist between magnetic domains, but to date manipulating such walls has been too expensive and complicated to achieve significant results.
In his paper, Mr Parkin describes a milestone in which he and his team were able to store data in columns of magnetic material arranged on the surface of a silicon wafer. The information moves around the columns at high speed, giving the technology its racetrack name.
IBM said the technology was still "exploratory" at this stage, but that it expected devices which used it to be on the market within ten years. |
I'm not quite sure who would want that much memory, because everyone who I know has atleast 1000 songs on their iPods, and it seems that memory for the iPod, show that the person who uses that much memory, likes all types of music and they might as well listen to the radio.
I do think it's pretty schweet that technology is improving at a faster rate than we all think, and it's great to see people inventing this, but maybe creating something for the computer, to hold that much memory, might be useful to video gamers, who play online. What is your view on this technology? |
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Parabuzzy Queen
Macha
Joined: 18 Jun 2007
Posts: 11083
HP: 10 MP: 5 Lives: 0
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 7:34 pm
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That's... just...
*nosebleeds*
I wish them luck. Technology like that could be used to make computers A. smarter, B. smaller, and possibly C. more affordable.
...And that much storage space is just... wow. *drools* |
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LOL I just lost the game!
Tiptron MKII
Joined: 26 May 2007
Posts: 1876
HP: 100 MP: 10 Lives: 0
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 7:38 pm
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I need something like that for my brain.... I'm too stupid for my own good. |
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He's that guy.
Merlink
Joined: 16 Aug 2007
Posts: 3522
HP: 10 MP: 1 Lives: 0
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 7:40 pm
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*Jaw drops*
That's incredible!
I don't fully understand how that works but if it can be accomplished it will change the standard of technology forever.
| Parabuzzy Queen wrote: | That's... just...
*nosebleeds*
I wish them luck. Technology like that could be used to make computers A. smarter, B. smaller, and possibly C. more affordable.
...And that much storage space is just... wow. *drools* |
Also, you forgot 'D. faster'. |
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YoshiAngemon
Sammer Guy Pizza Cat
Joined: 16 May 2007
Posts: 2285
HP: 100 MP: 8 Lives: 1
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 9:44 pm
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Something so tiny, yet it holds a lot of music? Why can't we get a form of Cell-phone based communication that tiny, like the Codec system from Metal Gear Solid. |
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Super ShadowArticuno
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Posts: 29080
HP: 99 MP: 5 Lives: 0
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 9:59 pm
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| YoshiAngemon wrote: | | Something so tiny, yet it holds a lot of music? Why can't we get a form of Cell-phone based communication that tiny, like the Codec system from Metal Gear Solid. |
At the rate Technology is advancing, we just might be saying "Snake? Get up Snake! SNAAAAAAAKE!!" on our codecs in a matter of years. |
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Black Yoshi
Vampire
Joined: 17 Jun 2007
Posts: 14673
HP: 31 MP: 10 Lives: 1
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:28 pm
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| Parabuzzy Queen wrote: | That's... just...
*nosebleeds*
I wish them luck. Technology like that could be used to make computers A. smarter, B. smaller, and possibly C. more affordable.
...And that much storage space is just... wow. *drools* |
This.
*nerdgasm*
:B |
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oar
Super Maiq the Liar
Joined: 23 May 2007
Posts: 17919
HP: 100 MP: 10 Lives: 0
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| Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 6:12 am
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Because somebody out there actually listens to 500,000 songs. |
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