IBM Gets Atoms to Remember Data, Feb 07, 2012

Researchers at IBM have succeeded in encoding data in just 12 magnetic atoms, an enormous improvement over conventional disk drives that use as many as 100 atoms to store a single bit of Information. The accomplishment could lead to future breakthroughs in nanocomputation and computer efficiency.

To make it happen, the IBM team had to look beyond the traditional silicon transistor and get specially magnetized atoms to “hold” information by spinning in one of two directions, to represent the binary digits zero and one.

“The chip industry will continue its pursuit of incremental scaling in semiconductor technology but, as components continue to shrink, the march continues to the inevitable end point: the atom. We’ re taking the opposite approach and starting with the smallest unit -- single atoms -- to build computing devices one atom at a time, ” said project leader Andreas Heinrich in a press release.

Source: IBM   

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