Science, Technology, and pawbs
Data is written by two million laser beamlets that punch QR code-like nano-scale patterns into the surface of the media. The laser pulse is sharpened by a digital micromirror device, and shaped by microscope optics onto the surface of the data carrier. This process imprints holes – or no holes – onto the surface layer, which represents binary information.
It’s futuristic punchcards. We’ve come full circle.
It’s futuristic punchcards.
always was.
Pretty much, yeah! CDs and blu-rays aren’t all that different from punch cards, as the data is literally stored as indentations on the disc with a reflective layer. Arguably CD-RWs are kind of different as they change the reflectivity of a material itself… Hard drives and floppies are maaaaybe slightly different too because they use changes in magnetism instead of physical indentations too. You could probably argue that flash and DRAM aren’t glorified punchcards? But I mean, ultimately all data is stored in a physical medium somehow so it’s always going to have some resemblance!
Tapes and spinning disks were futuristic magnetized wire.
Or even eched tablets, we've double backed on the full circle.
"Alright class, pull out your chisel and slate.."
Sounds like it would be difficult to rewrite/edit the data?
A punchcard is two dimensional. Actually you can have multiple dimensions on a punch card, the positions of the card can store different data and you can determine what that is by the position of holes on another part of the card.
Whereas a paper tape, or a magnetic tape is serial and has only one dimension (you can divide the tape into different bands though).
I've been seeing news stories like this every couple of years for most of my life, and yet storage technology just continues to plod along at the same pace it always has. Nothing ever comes of it.
Just as you probably never see tape storage, you would never see this storage method either, as it's not intended for personal use.
However, while you do not see tape storage being used, it's maybe what the majority of world's storage uses.
It's a sensational headline, sure - but I manage a few 200TB single unit servers at work and my cell phone has more than 20x the storage the computer I took to college had, and probably 20x faster.
To claim what you are ignores the significant improvements we've seen in the past 2 decades.
Obviously I'm not saying storage technology doesn't improve. But it's incremental improvements, not exponential like these stories always claim.
idk, I've still got some 512kb floppies somewhere.
Next to me is a 512GB flash drive.
1997 - 2023 is 26 years for a 1,000,000x larger storage device.
So come 2049, that should be at 512PB, they're forecasting 10PB.
I say it sounds reasonable enough.
So am I wrong to say this is a stone tablet hard drive? Doesn't seem like you can overwrite data on it
Yeah, looks like write once. Which, we got a lot of mileage out of CD-Rs, libraries are useful.
I feel like we don’t appreciate the history of data storage enough! It’s kind of wild looking at how different the world was when CD-Rs came out. They could store substantially more data than a typical hard drive of the time and were dirt cheap. So you would get bulletin boards hosting content from optical drives and stuff. It’s also (partially) why you would have to use discs for games in the past, instead of just installing them to the hard drive. When hard drives are expensive it’s probably better to just stream music and assets from an optical disc instead of taking up precious space. Sometimes you could play a game (or part of it) without the disc, but you wouldn’t get music because that was left on the disc.
Sometimes you could even put the game in the CD player and listen to the game tracks!
Oh man, I forgot you could do that. CDs really are cool
I would even argue most storage is used as write once storage. From backup systems to libraries, a lot of data is data we want to just record, and never overwrite.
You don't need to. These are intended for backups and data archiving where storage density matters the most
Seems like thered be some extra hoops to get through for differential backups, impossible to us for most daily applications, probably better suited for things like laboratory and archives..
It looks like you can’t overwrite new data, but you can still punch it full of ones :p
... Data can be written at GBps speeds, with TB/square-centimeter areal densities ...
Say, 8 Tbits/cm² (so 1 TB/cm²) ...
this is aprox ( 10^-7^m )^2^ unit cells.
Conventional optical microscopy cannot resolve this, so, maybe they are using evanescent surface optics ?
I like your funny words, magic man
Very happy to hear you saying this, well, this is science not magics :
Evanescent field
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evanescent_field
In electromagnetics, an evanescent field, or evanescent wave, is an oscillating electric and/or magnetic field that does not propagate as an electromagnetic...
I like your funny words, magnet man.
Thanks for these kind words Mr C. Happy.
(I know there must be a joke and I'm sorry that I do not get it. I have a lot of difficulty to grasp many jokes. Thanks anyway.)
The line "I like your funny words, magic man" is from this scene from Clone High. People use it when they want to show they don't understand what was said but appreciated it none the less. CrackHappy changed it to "magnet man" because they are least got that much from what you were saying.
Aaah ! that's why ! Thanks :)
People wouldn't believe but since 10 years I've watched maybe 5 to 10 hours (total) of video including YouTube, TV and whatever. Also went to cinema maybe five times.
Missing the odd pop culture reference is understandable in that case haha
🤣
Good question. "Everything was built with CoTS components"... Hmm.
Data can be written at GBps speeds
A CD, a conventional CD manufactured in a CD pressing plant, could be basically etched instantly, it would go into a holder and all the pits would be etched at the same time. These machines were of course fantastically expensive though, they had to make 100,000s of CDs to make it worthwhile.
The etching process works twice, ethcing each pit and then verifying it before going onto the next. I doubt this could be done at a fast speed with equipment that was within the price range of say, a state library. I think the author has confused the access time with the writing time.
Yes I agree : they must have a very expensive, very powerful and very precise writing device.
Based on the demo video I'm assuming this is more for archival storage rather than on demand. So more like a tape replacement rather than hard drive?
Yes. Hugely important topic in itself. M-Disc is the current best we have, with claims they will last 1000 years if properly stored (limited by the plastic degredation). But ceramics should be more stable, and the speed claims look good. This is not the only tech solution vying to be a long term contender but looks like a potential good one.
That's the impression I'm getting from it too
That thumbnail looks cool
Storage tech isn't as sensationalized and vapor-heavy as battery tech, but I do still wish holographic versatile discs had been a thing.
The firm claims it's cost-effective, fast, and scalable technology for future data storage because no energy is consumed to store data and it can last more than 5,000 years due to the fact it's made from ceramic. The best hard drives and best SSDs, by contrast, need to be replaced every few years.
lol, they for real discovered something that was discovered 12,000 years ago. ceramic keeps for a long time.
I'm pretty sure their discoveries here are not the material properties of ceramics, but how to turn them into cost effective digital storage devices.