“Mobile phones, iPods and other consumer devices may soon be able to hold a hundred times more information than they do at present thanks to a breakthrough in storage technology,” Jonathan Richards reports for The Times Online.
“Scientists at IBM say they have developed a new type of digital storage which would enable a device such as an MP3 player to store about half a million songs – or 3,500 films – and cost far less to produce,” Richards reports.
“In a paper published in the current issue of Science, a team at the company’s research centre in San Jose, California, said that devices which use the new technology would require much less power, would run on a single battery charge for ‘weeks at a time,’ and would last for decades,” Richards reports.
“So-called ‘racetrack’ memory uses the ‘spin’ of an electron to store data, and can operate far more quickly than regular hard drives… it can ‘write data’ – or store information – extremely quickly, and does not have the ‘wear out’ mechanism,” Richards reports.
“At present the most capacious iPod – the 160GB iPod Classic – can store 40,000 songs,” Richards reports.
“IBM said the technology was still “exploratory” at this stage, but that it expected devices which used it to be on the market within ten years,” Richards reports.
Full article here.
Well this is a new ‘spin’ on storage capacity.
I’ll probably be six feet under or dust on my favorite beach.
Buster, glad to see IBM is charging ahead with this research.
IBM is more vaporware than MS. I’ll believe it when its’ actually here.
IBM- The ultimate vaporware company. Touting possibilities, never any real products that amount to anything in the market. How’s that POWER processor workin’ for ya?
Dang. I can’t wait `til 2022.
12.5X in ten years?
2x2x2x2= … 16? It will be too little, too late. Well, maybe the battery bonus will be the bonus. The 2X of “Moore’s Law” doesn’t take changes in battery tech into consideration – which is good, because I’m not sure if we’ve seen a 2X jump in battery output (by size, rated by time) in two decades, much less two years.
Still … interesting.
Heard it before. New types of storage are always popping up in science magazines. I remember one on holographic storage that held a few terabytes from 1996 or there abouts. From experience, it is best to simply ignore these until someone says they actually have a product.
An IBM system can process 1,760 points of Folding@Home work units in a day, my G5 Dualie just barely manages 1/10th of that even if that’s ALL it does. Let’s not be too hard on the Big Iron guys, OK?
Hey whats with this terrible attempted mobile MDN site? It looks and feels unfinished.
MacBook Airs w/ RaceTrack drives anyone?
Ah “DL” the G5 is an IBM product
Can me and my partner Zune Tang get that in our Zunes?
I’m just asking.
“IBM- The ultimate vaporware company. Touting possibilities, never any real products that amount to anything in the market. How’s that POWER processor workin’ for ya?”
Not totally vaporware though:
The Microdrive was developed and launched in 1999 by IBM with a capacity of 170 MB, which was expanded to 8 GB by 2006. They weigh about 16 g (~1/2 oz), with dimensions of 42.8×36.4×5 mm (1.7×1.4×.2 in). These were the smallest hard drives in the world at the time.
Seems that we’ve all received some benefit from this IBM Vaporware!
I see the release of the iPod life soundtrack:
all the music you can listen to in a lifetime on an iPod Shuffle.
Lifetime warranty of course.
forgot to give credit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive
What’s the point of this information?
If you’re IBM, wouldn’t you keep your mouths shut? It’s not like this “new” method is going to result in a bump in their stock price or anything. I don’t see the benefit of telling every other tech company in the world that you’re 10 years away from a concept.
I mean, why would you give anyone a chance to catch up? In my view, you patent it if you can and then don’t talk about it until you’re a bit closer to a real product.
People accuse Apple of secrecy. However, the over-promise and under-deliver ways of every other tech company seems much more asinine to me.
Do they still make those?
Nice although I’m happy with my Classic 160GB for the time being.
iPod circa 2001: 1000 Songs in Your Pocket
iPod circe 2012: Every Song in Your Pocket
To Buster and bjh:
It sounds like they’re on track to head up this sector in the mean time between other product failures and server a victory on a platter to the arms of those willing to jumper on board.
I’d like to implant some of that newfangled memory technology into my little head.
I forget why I’m writing this.
“store about half a million songs – or 3,500 films…”
Why?
Let´s see to watch 3,500 films and you watch 1 per day then it would take about 10 years to watch them all….
500,000 songs at 4 minutes each = 2,000,000 minutes. If one listened for 1 hour per day it would take you 33,333 days to listen to them all…
Not counting all the time to download, collect, organize etc this huge library.
Reading on the same subject from Slashdot, 4 years ago they patented the technology, and now they’ve gotten a working prototype. Currently it only stores 3 bits of information on a loop, but it’s more a proof of concept at this point. From here it looks like just a case of improving it to the point where it’s actually usable.
The one thing I’d wonder about is if it needs to be powered at all times to retain memory…
wow, i am impressed by the “vaporware” comments.
maybe some of you need to have a look at IBMs patent portfolio.
look, i know they screwed up the whole G5 and future PPC stuff, but they could shut down the entire company except for a few book keepers and make billions a year off of what they have already invented. this is a company that makes new things. don’t let anger and ignorance make you look like an ass…..