From: Matthew Gaylor (freematt@coil.com)
Date: Sat Jan 16 1999 - 13:55:06 MST
Excerpted via... The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing Jan. 11, 1999 by
Jeffrey R. Harrow Senior Consulting Engineer, Corporate Research,
Compaq Computer Corporation, jeff.harrow@compaq.com Insight, analysis and
commentary on the innovations and trends of contemporary computing, and on
the technologies that drive them (not necessarily the views of Compaq
Computer Corporation).
http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc
ISSN: 1520-8117
Copyright (c)1999, Compaq Computer Corporation
###
The "Sugar Cube" That Remembers...
Last issue we talked about how nanotechnology may, eventually,
enable us to store "...a hundred billion billion bytes in a volume
the size of a sugar cube"
(http://www.digital.com/rcfoc/981221.htm#A_Hundred_Billion_Billion).
But of course that's off in the far future. So how about a mere "100
trillion bits of data in a cubic centimeter of space?"
Brought to our attention by RCFoC reader Alan Maltzman from the Dec.
15 Nikkei English News, it seems that Japan Science and Technology
Corp. and Kyoto University's Hirao Active Glass Project is pursuing
an optical storage device that will use femtosecond lasers (pulsing
a thousand-trillion times each second) to store a hundred terabits
of data in that tiny volume.
They begin with today's optical storage technique of using a laser
to burn pits in a surface. But they combine this with the laser's
ability to alter the state of a rare earth element called
"samarium," mixed into this glass storage medium, in a special way.
Rather than burning a simple "on or off" pit, the samarium can be
altered to only "burn out" certain "colors" from each spot, thereby
allowing each spot to take on one of many different values (rather
than only a 1 or 0).
This is only "basic research" at this time. But it is a good
reminder that it may not take the seemingly far-out technology
breakthroughs of nanotechnology to make potentially vast differences
in how we compute -- shorter-term innovation might allow us to store
a year of Digital TV content in a glass sugar cube. Just don't drop
it in your cup of coffee...
###
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