The new "bit"... IBM shatter's Moore's Law. New era of quantum computing has arrived!

The New Bit

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible.

The findings, being reported Thursday in the journal Science, could help lead to a new class of nanomaterials for a generation of memory chips and disk drives that will not only have greater capabilities than the current silicon-based computers but will consume significantly less power. And they may offer a new direction for research in quantum computing.

“Magnetic materials are extremely useful and strategically important to many major economies, but there aren’t that many of them,” said Shan X. Wang, director of the Center for Magnetic Nanotechnology at Stanford University. “To make a brand new material is very intriguing and scientifically very important.”

Until now, the most advanced magnetic storage systems have needed about one million atoms to store a digital 1 or 0. The new achievement is the product of a heated international race between elite physics laboratories to explore the properties of magnetic materials at a far smaller scale.

This is nothing short of amazing.

We are coming scarily close to the capabilities of the human brain...

Originally posted by YouAreLiedTo
The New Bit

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible.

The findings, being reported Thursday in the journal Science, could help lead to a new class of nanomaterials for a generation of memory chips and disk drives that will not only have greater capabilities than the current silicon-based computers but will consume significantly less power. And they may offer a new direction for research in quantum computing.

“Magnetic materials are extremely useful and strategically important to many major economies, but there aren’t that many of them,” said Shan X. Wang, director of the Center for Magnetic Nanotechnology at Stanford University. “To make a brand new material is very intriguing and scientifically very important.”

Until now, the most advanced magnetic storage systems have needed about one million atoms to store a digital 1 or 0. The new achievement is the product of a heated international race between elite physics laboratories to explore the properties of magnetic materials at a far smaller scale.

This is nothing short of amazing.

We are coming scarily close to the capabilities of the human brain...

edit on 13-1-2012 by YouAreLiedTo because: Fixed link

I dont think we'll ever get close to the capabilities of the human brain but... WOW from 1,000,000 atoms to just 12... thats 83,333x less number of atoms needed.. to store 1/0

Magnets are so cool, but so confounding too. Our technology has just now in the last ten years, become sufficiently advanced enough to start to "become" our society - in a McLuan kind of way - the medium is the message. As excited as I am for such achievements, I fear them at the same time.

And on a side note.. If scientists can use magnets to make quantum computers, and corporations like IBM have already developed the technology and are putting out stories about it in the NYT, and that's all ok with the big bosses and the big playas, then imagine what they have that they don't tell you about.

Skynet needs that kind of chip to grow

wow, just wow. It is mind boggling how computer technology has advanced from its early beginnings.

I was reading an article about next gen chips. it was titled:

The next generation computer chips might be made of DNA

By Boonsri Dickinson | May 12, 2010, 5:43 AM PDT

DNA might soon replace silicon as the perfect computing material. DNA can build itself up from scratch and become anything it wants and self assemble. We can only shrink silicon so much.

So if computer chips were made of DNA, the cost of producing the biological circuits would be much cheaper

By mixing DNA with other molecules, Dwyer hopes to make billions of waffle structures this way. As it turns out, the “other” molecules is a special light sensitive material — so only light is needed to program the biological circuit. When light hits the light sensitive material, it creates switches (or logic gates).


“Biology is the ultimate manufacturing technology,” says MIT computer scientist Tom Knight. If we could replicate devices cheaply, it would change the world, he believes. Biology is reliable and robust. “If you take a laptop and open it up and cut a wire, it will not work anymore. If a person is pricked with a pin, they will not fall over dead. They go on living.”

Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil once said, “Our computers aren’t going to be these distinct rectangular devices we carry around. We are going to merge with them.”

www.smartplanet.com...

I wonder if the way things are heading we could even imagine what applications future technologies will have. Imagine bodies being synthetically made and enhanced with these types of technologies. I think the future is the merging of the human body with a varied and diverse set of technologies. It is all leading to one direction.
New mankind.

I wonder how all these new types of data storage will impact us commercially in the next couple of years. You could store all the worlds knowledge on a handheld device eventually.

Originally posted by casenately

I wonder if the way things are heading we could even imagine what applications future technologies will even have. Imagine bodies being synthetically made and enhanced with these types of technologies. I think the future is the merging of the human body with a varied and diverse set of technologies. It is all leading to one direction.
New mankind.

You will all be assimilated...

Resistance is futile.

If things keep going the way they are soon we will greatly surpass the capabilitys of the human brain, within 20-40 years we may even be able to store our own consciousness. Instant immortality of a fashion or a least a longevity of 1000s of years, this may even open up travel in our local star cluster, granted it will still take 100s of years to get there.

magnets need helium...helium is nearly empty on earth....but there is a lot of it on the moon...so for future computers we definitly need a moon-base....juhu =)

12 Atoms??? Wow that's amazing. Quantum effects must really be significant at that scale, so I don't see how they can get much smaller and in fact, they may only be able to go that small in lab tests, because 12 atoms may not be enough to provide accurate data retrieval due to quantum effects.

It's an interesting lab result if they can restore the saved bit correctly 99% of the time, but 99% isn't good enough for any practical application. However, I'm not sure what the lower effective limit will be for reliable data retrieval...maybe 100 atoms? Just a guess.

reply to post by Hessdalen

No, they don't need Helium:

www.oxford-instruments.com... ndensing%20systems%20capability%20guidefinalpdf.pdf

Superconducting magnets need a coolant, and liquid helium is often used, but as that link shows, it's not required. They just need something to cool them to the proper temperature.

(Edit: The only way to see that pdf is to copy and paste the link in your browser after you click "quote" so you can see the whole link)

Yeah it's amazing.

Though they do need that hard drive to be capable of retreiving information reliably for 99.98% of the time or something close to that.

Heck even if they dont work out all the kinks for a few years, and do an extra backup of all files on the disk about 3 times over, so if one fails then try the backup automatically..., it's still ALOT more storage compared to todays standard.

I think the ramifications of this are being missed by most of you.

Let me help bridge the gap...

One gigabyte = 1,073,741,824 bits...

On an ordinary hard drive that would take 1,073,000,000,000,000 atoms. That is, 1.073x10^15...

It will now take...

12,884,901,888 atoms.

They can now fit 84,000 TIMES the amount of data in the same amount of "space".

To put it another way....

Imagine your one gigabyte hard drive now holding 84,000 gigabytes...

reply to post by seenavv


seenaw, never say never when it comes to technology.

Many people in the past have said never and only time has proven them wrong. People once thought a person couldn't run faster than 20 mph because you'd be going so fast you couldn't get air in your lungs. In the early 1900s, people thought a car couldn't go faster than 40 mph because you'd go so fast that you'd warp into another dimension. Crazy but true. For decades, people have been saying the speed of light is the fastest anything can travel. I highly doubt that. With human ingenuity, we will find a way to travel faster than light.

Human ingenuity will find a way to completely mimic the human brain. It is just a matter of time. Go back in time 20 years ago and bring the latest gadgets of today. People would be astounded what these non-household appliances, called computers, can do.

My point is never say never when it comes with technology. We as the human race could care less about assumed boundaries and limits. Because in 20 to 100 years our world will seem more alien than today.

Originally posted by YouAreLiedTo
I think the ramifications of this are being missed by most of you.

Let me help bridge the gap...

One gigabyte = 1,073,741,824 bits...

On an ordinary hard drive that would take 1,073,000,000,000,000 atoms. That is, 1.073x10^15...

It will now take...

12,884,901,888 atoms.

They can now fit 84,000 TIMES the amount of data in the same amount of "space".

To put it another way....

Imagine your one gigabyte hard drive now holding 84,000 gigabytes...

Thank you for doing the calculations!!
I was trying to do them when I read you post.

I honestlythink that we've probebly had these computing abilities for years now via military/ government. Because we all know any new technology/capabilities goes to the military first and once the military has well surpassed the tech, THEN the public hears about it.

Makes you wonder what kind of computing power we are ACTUALY capable of at this time.
Hmmmmmmm.......

My question is:

How much is it going to cost? Will it be affordable?

Originally posted by nixie_nox
My question is:

How much is it going to cost? Will it be affordable?

Not at the start as with any new tech. Think of solid state drives when they first became available...WAY overpriced. Companies want and need to make a large profit margin on these technologies in order to give them at the discounted price they do to either gov't factions or enterprise organizations. Typically gov't gets these technologies at less than 50% of the cost to make them. Enterprise is close to 50%. While these advances in tech are great, it is still just the "hardware" they are talking about. It is the software/services industry or section of these companies that makes the leaps and bounds in order to utilize the hardware that is being developed. Hardware is most often very close to being given away in order to secure the services for the company/client the hardware vendor is working with.

reply to post by YouAreLiedTo


This is technically nothing to do with moores law thats about how many transistors on a chip not about storing data.

Originally posted by wmd_2008
reply to post by YouAreLiedTo

 

This is technically nothing to do with moores law thats about how many transistors on a chip not about storing data.

It has very much to do with Moore's Law.

Moore's Law

The capabilities of many digital electronic devices are strongly linked to Moore's law: processing speed, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras.[2] All of these are improving at (roughly) exponential rates (see Other formulations and similar laws).

Memory capacity...

And I was quoting the title as shown on my browser as per posting guidelines in any case...

technology never stops .... I can remember having my first hard drive, 5MB, 5.25 inches, full height, and I thought that was the pinnacle of technology. (that was about 30 years ago). Now I have 30TB distributed in my house, heck, I don't want to know what we will have 30 from now

Holy #, thats smaller than DNA!

Originally posted by andy06shake
If things keep going the way they are soon we will greatly surpass the capabilitys of the human brain, within 20-40 years we may even be able to store our own consciousness. Instant immortality of a fashion or a least a longevity of 1000s of years, this may even open up travel in our local star cluster, granted it will still take 100s of years to get there.

I would not be surprised if they many decades ago (if not for a hell of a lot longer) perfected storing their own consciousness on a computer. This combined with "super rapid cloning - a la "fifth element" movie - growing a scraping of the individuals cells stored in a vault into a fully developed adult human being at whatever age one wished to be and transfering the "fully aware" computer stored consciousness back into YOUR body! Imagine furthermore an ENLIGHTENED individual his/her conscious mind encompassing not only the infinite materialistic 3d Earth realm but the Infinite Dimensions of etherial Heaven and etheric Hell - and beyond! GOD-MAN ! SIMPLEZ