IBM Says Polymer Memory Could Be Ready By 2005 145
prostoalex writes "Polymer memory is hardly anything new, and we already had HP and Princeton announcing their prototype. In a Forbes magazine article IBM promises polymer memory that's five times cheaper than current flash memory, and expects the first devices with polymer data storage systems to be delivered possibly by 2005. IBM's Zurich Lab published this article last year with description of Millipede."
Sorry about that bad editing [fixed version] (Score:3, Informative)
Some say The Information Age began with the invention of the PC. For others, it's the birth of the Internet, the development of the silicon chip or the global crisscrossing of fiber-optic cable that shifted our societal pivot from goods-production to information management.
In a couple of years, IBM's Millipede data storage system might also enter the debate.
Millipede harkens back to the days of computers gleaning information from punch cards, but this time, the information is stored in nanometer-sized indentations in a thin polymer film. According to the company, Millipede has the potential to provide significantly greater storage capacity than flash memory at a lower price. Another advantage: smaller and easier-to-use devices.
"Imagine a video camera in which each segment you've recorded is displayed in a directory with a unique file name, instantly accessed, appended or erased at the push of a button," says Christopher Andrews, communications program manager for the Armonk, N.Y,-based company. "If you're on vacation and want to erase an old segment to make room for something new, there would be no need to hunt with 'rewind' and 'fast forward' to find the section of the tape you're looking for."
Devices such as video cameras, portable video players and portable music players need more storage memory than flash memory can provide at an acceptable price, Andrews says. That's why most devices use tape or optical disks to store information. If these devices used Millipede-based storage cards, they could be smaller and use less power in addition to allowing data to be stored in downloadable files.
"Millipede will likely offer a cost per gigabyte approximately five times cheaper than flash in high-end cards," Andrews says. "Millipede would make a lot of sense in devices like PDAs and smart phones."
Although other companies such as Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ) and Samsung are also pursuing probe-based data storage, IBM says it was among the first to invest heavily in research and development and is poised to be among the first to have probe-based devices on the market, possibly by 2005.
This year, researchers at IBM's Zurich lab began restoring and retrieving data files using Millipede technology. Much of the work on Millipede has taken place in Zurich, but other IBM locations are involved.
IBM plans to target flash memory immediately, a potential $10 billion market. Beyond that, Millipede could have implications in biotechnology and other nanotechnology fields.
Millipede is based on two "breakthrough technologies," according to IBM: thermomechanical recording, in which an extremely sharp tip on a microcantilever with an integrated heater makes and reads back nanometer-scale indentations in a specialized polymer film; secondly, creation and integration of thousands of thermomechanical probes in a micromechanical array, married with a micromechanical actuator that scans the probes over the polymer surface to store and retrieve data in various locations on the film.
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IPod (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is why video compression will soon not mat (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is why video compression will soon not mat (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure about that. Uncompressed video is gigantic. Huge. An hour of uncompressed video takes up about 70 gb, assuming it's regular NTSC rez. Thus you could barely fit a movie on your 100 gig media. It's much better just to use high quality lossy compression, such as MPEG-2 or Xvid or soemthing. If you crank the bitrates high enough, there is no visible artifacting or quality loss.
I'd much rather have 10 hours of HDTV video rather than an hour of uncompressed. Uncompressed video will only be feasable once media can hold hundreds of gigabytes, rather than the 9 gigs that dual layer DVDs hold today.
Re:This is why video compression will soon not mat (Score:3, Informative)
Let me see. 720x480x2 (16 bit color) = 691200 = 675kB per frame. 24 frames per second for a Hollywood movie = 15.82 MB per second. Times 3600 for an hour is 55.62 GB without sound.
Therefore, a two-hour movie is 111.2 GB without sound. If we kind on sound and compress that, for the joy of having perfect DVD-level video, I'm not far from my original estimation.
If you get greedy and desire 24-bit color, that will cost more, 166 GB per two hours.
Centipedes & millipedes (Score:2, Informative)
Didn't know the names so found this link [kaweahoaks.com], and they sure as well would also freak me out! :-)
But the page says: Centipedes require moist habitats. If they are plentiful, there may be an underlying moisture problem that should be corrected.
Just wanted to bring it to your attention!
Re:Hmmm. Cheap long term storage? (Score:4, Informative)
Millipede does have moving parts. The polymer moves under the needles, which read and write to it through heat.
They also mention that they've designed it to be resistant to external vibrations. Which implies that it could be adversely affected by some types of vibrations.
It also has an ability to be rewritten only about 100,000 times, apparently, making it not suitable as a hard disk replacement.
It seems as if this tech at least initially will be good for what IBM is saying it's good for: as a FLASH replacement, at least for some applications. It doesn't appear to be useful as a general-purpose storage device.
Hard drives aren't going bye-bye all that soon, it seems.