- New Memory Will Store Data for 1 Billion Years - The American Chemical Society
For many years, the electronic industry has adhered to DeMorgan’s law which says that every two years the computing ability of society will double while the surface area required to hold such computing power will be halved. Since the computer revolution of the 1980’s, DeMorgan’s law has held true using conventional silicon microchips.
According to Science Daily, silicon microchips can be compared to strawberries in a supermarket carton: the denser you pack, the quicker it spoils. It currently takes 10 to 30 years for a memory chip to “spoil,” which is analogous to losing the data contained on that memory chip.
An Advance in Computer Memory Technology
It is widely known that there is a limit to silicon based computer processing because of this data loss limitation. Researchers have recently reported an advance in this regard and claim the ability to store thousands of times more data than conventional silicon chips with an estimated lifetime of more than 1 billion years.
Alex Zettl and his colleagues note that William the Conqueror’s Doomsday Book was written on vellum in 1086 AD and has survived over 900 years. The digital version of the book was encoded in 1986 and failed within 20 years.
The experimental memory device devised by Zettl’s team consists of an iron nanoparticle enclosed in a carbon nanotube. The iron nanoparticle is approximately 1/50,000 the width of a human hair and can be assigned values with great precision in the presence of electricity within the carbon nanotube. This allows data to be stored in binary format (1 or 0) that is compatible with today’s systems in that the nanoparticle can act as programmable system memory that can record digital information and behave similarly to today’s silicon based memory chip.
Applications for Increased Memory Storage
The applications are almost limitless because the opening of memory at this level impacts so many different industries. Memory limitations have been a large hurdle in artificial intelligence as researchers push the limits of what memory can do as they try to emulate the human brain.
The Human Genome Project also suffers from memory limitations as their large collection of DNA data takes large amounts of memory to store while the processing power is a direct influence on the speed in which data can be analyzed. Practical applications include the next generation of smart phones, video games, personal computers, space technology and bio technology.
The Philosophy of Unlimited Memory Storage Capacity
The philosophical implications are equally important as humans, for the first time in history, can now transfer data in its original state for years into the future. Is it conceivable that all of the world’s literary works can be stored on one single USB drive?
With this new electromechanical memory device, data can maintain its integrity longer than the human brain with a storage capacity of 1000 times the latest conventional silicon memory chip. Smaller, better, faster have always been the mantra of computer manufacturers and the industry as a whole. Now a great jump forward has been plotted and the ramifications are only beginning to be understood.
Source
American Chemical Society. "New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years." ScienceDaily 26 May 2009. 9 June 2009 <http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/05/090525105418.htm>.
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