'Superman memory crystal' that could store 360TB of data forever | ExtremeTech - 0 views
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jcunha on 22 Feb 16A new so called 5D data storage that could potentially survive for billions of years. The research consists of nanostructured glass that can record digital data in five dimensions using femtosecond laser writing.
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jcunha on 22 Feb 16Very scarce scientific info available.. I'm very curious to see a bit more in future. From https://spie.org/PWL/conferencedetails/laser-micro-nanoprocessing I made a back of envelop calc: for 20 nm spaced, each laser spot in 5D encryption encodes 3 bits (it seemed to me) written in 3 planes, to obtain the claimed 360TB disk one needs very roughly 6000mm2, which does not complain with the dimensions shown in video. Only with larger number of planes (order of magnitude higher) it could be.. Also, at current commercial trends NAND Flash and HDD allow for 1000 Gb/in2. This means a 360 TB could hypothetically fit in 1800mm2.
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Alexander Wittig on 22 Feb 16I had the same issue with the numbers when I saw the announcement a few days back (https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page). It doesn't seem to add up. Plus, the examples they show are super low amounts of data (the bible probably fits on a few 1.44 MB floppy disk). As for the comparison with NAND and HDD, I think the main argument for their crystal is that it is supposedly more durable. HDDs are chronically bad at long term storage, and also NAND as far as I know needs to be refreshed frequently.
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jcunha on 23 Feb 16Yes Alex, indeed, the durability is the point I think they highlight and focus on (besides the fact the abstract says something as the extrapolated decay time being comparable to the age of the Universe..). Indeed memories face problems with retention time. Most of the disks retain the information up to 10 years. When enterprises want to store data for longer times than this they use... yeah, magnetic tapes :-). Check a interesting article about magnetic tape market revival here http://www.information-age.com/technology/data-centre-and-it-infrastructure/123458854/rise-fall-and-re-rise-magnetic-tape I compared for fun, to have one idea of what we were talking about. I am also very curious so see the writing and reading times in this new memory :)
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joergmueller on 23 Feb 16But how can glass store the information so long? Glass is not even solid?!