IBM Manipulating Atoms to Store Data

5 February, 2008 Posted by SolSie As News (0) Comment

Scientists at IBM’s Almaden Research Center located in San Jose, Calif aim to leap years ahead with new types of hardware for storing data. The center has been at the forefront of data storage and other breakthroughs for decades. I had the privilege to visit this hillside Technology Mecca a couple of times.

At IBM Almaden, a couple of Nobel prized scientists are trying to come up with breakthroughs that will help computers sift through the “Exabytes” of data that have become an inevitability for businesses and government agencies. (An exabyte is a quintillion bytes, or a billion gigabytes. 1000GigaBytes=1TeraBytes; 1000TeraBytes=1PetaBytes; 1000PetaBytes=1ExaBytes and 1 Byte=8 bits)

The technology uses scanning tunneling microscope (STM) that also functions as an atomic force microscope, which essentially is a higher-resolution STM. Andreas Heinrich, research staff member at IBM Almaden, is using it to study the magnetic fields of individual atoms.

Read more and view the picture gallery at CNet HERE!