12-atom magnetic memory bit

[Dragoner]

IBM researchers make 12-atom magnetic memory bit

Researchers have successfully stored a single data bit in only 12 atoms.

Currently it takes about a million atoms to store a bit on a modern hard-disk, the researchers from IBM say.

They believe this is the world's smallest magnetic memory bit.

According to the researchers, the technique opens up the possibility of producing much denser forms of magnetic computer memory than today's hard disk drives and solid state memory chips.

Full article at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16543497

Say hello to the Model 2 computer...

 

[aramis]

Good find! Interesting that room temp limit is expected to be between 150 and 200 atoms per bit.

 

[Dragoner]

Which is very small still and this is just the experimental phase, they may be able to refine it more; the deck of cards super-computer is around the corner.

edit: just did the math, 12 divided by a million comes at .0012% of the current size. Wow!

 

[aramis]

Which is very small still and this is just the experimental phase, they may be able to refine it more; the deck of cards super-computer is around the corner.

edit: just did the math, 12 divided by a million comes at .0012% of the current size. Wow!

The definition of a supercomputer was, at one point, established in US law, having been about 1.5 gigaflops (1.5 billion floating point instructions per second). I remember the furor when the G5 exceeded that and certain issues were noted with a 1970's law... restricting export of 1 gigaflop computers as defense munitions.

And the Samsung G2 is benched at over 600 Megaflops... 0.6 gigaflops... and up to 720 MFlop. Add another core (that's using a dual-core processor), and it's pushing a gigaflop. Go to a double CPU design, and you'll be pushing that 1.5 boundary REALLY hard.

We could build handhelds that meet that way-outdated Defense Munitions standard today... people just can't afford them.

And many exceed the Cray-1's 100-160 Mflops...

 

[Dragoner]

I was thinking of the cabinet sized units right now, like a cray or big blue; at about two cubic meters (2hx1wx1l), multiply it by 0.000012 and it becomes ) 0.000024m^3, holy crap that's 0.0024cc's! Not all of the cray is processor or memory and I guess I should not be suprised, look at the size of the UNIVAC to today, but it still is incredible; we're talking wrist supercomputers.

 

[aramis]

I was thinking of the cabinet sized units right now, like a cray or big blue; at about two cubic meters (2hx1wx1l), multiply it by 0.000012 and it becomes ) 0.000024m^3, holy crap that's 0.0024cc's! Not all of the cray is processor or memory and I guess I should not be suprised, look at the size of the UNIVAC to today, but it still is incredible; we're talking wrist supercomputers.

Modern "supercomputers" are in the teraflop range. Keep in mind, the term will be "updated" by *******s who never looked up a tech spec in their lives for the biggest, baddest computers out there... when handhelds hit teraflops, mainframes will be hitting 10's of petaflops.

 

[Dragoner]

Hmmm, doing the average braincase of a homo sapien at 1350cc, divided by .0024, it only comes out to 562500 bits or 70312.5 bytes or just 6% of a megabyte. Something seems wrong with my calcs, that seems too low, even by today's standards.

edit: OK, got it, it is equal to 562500 cabinet sized units, whoa, now that is huge.

 

[Otto Harkaman]

Skill chips

Need a skill plug in a chip. You can buy or obtain skill chips that can be activated to solve puzzles and increase your aptitude.

Been looking at old Dos games like Neuromancer and Circuit's Edge which is based on George Effinger's "When Gravity Fails."

Maybe these aren't common in the Imperium because they are illegal?

 

[aramis]

Need a skill plug in a chip. You can buy or obtain skill chips that can be activated to solve puzzles and increase your aptitude.

Been looking at old Dos games like Neuromancer and Circuit's Edge which is based on George Effinger's "When Gravity Fails."

Maybe these aren't common in the Imperium because they are illegal?

Neuromancer is based upon the novel of the same name by William Gibson.

They are canonically not unlawful, just socially unacceptable and outside the character generation sequences.

Moreover, implanted computing (and cyberpunk in general) didn't have much traction (nor treatment) until after about 1984's Neuromancer, GAE's 1986 When Gravity Fails, and Walter Jon Williams' 1986 Hard Wired.

Lobot is one of the first popular sci-fi characters to be wired (SW: Empire Strikes Back), and unless you read the novelizations, it's not even clear he is.

GDW seems to catch on in about 1987...

 

[Otto Harkaman]

Lobot is one of the first popular sci-fi characters to be wired (SW: Empire Strikes Back), and unless you read the novelizations, it's not even clear he is.

Interesting, never would have known. Never read any of the novelizations of the movies.

 

[BlackBat242]

They are canonically not unlawful, just socially unacceptable and outside the character generation sequences.

Moreover, implanted computing (and cyberpunk in general) didn't have much traction (nor treatment) until after about 1984's Neuromancer, GAE's 1986 When Gravity Fails, and Walter Jon Williams' 1986 Hard Wired.

GDW seems to catch on in about 1987...

JTAS #22 (early 1985) Computer Implants by J. Andrew Keith

Surgically implanted transmitter with physical neurological link to allow direct brain-CPU interaction.

 

[rancke]

Moreover, implanted computing (and cyberpunk in general) didn't have much traction (nor treatment) until after about 1984's Neuromancer, GAE's 1986 When Gravity Fails, and Walter Jon Williams' 1986 Hard Wired.

Niven & Barnes' Oath of Fealthy from 1982 features direct contact with a sophisticated computer system via brain implants.


Hans