IBM Introducing Single Atom Data Gates and Molecular Computers
- Scribbled on August 31st, 2007 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Industry News, PC, Press Release
We’ve already caughte a glimpse of the future with the Tera-Disc, but now, the venerable - some would say “living fossil” - International Business Machines (aka IBM) is bringing forth single atom data gates and molecular computers, a quantum leap ahead to miniaturization.
With further work it may be possible to build structures consisting of small clusters of atoms, or even individual atoms, that could reliably store magnetic information. Such a storage capability would enable nearly 30,000 feature length movies or the entire contents of YouTube - millions of videos estimated to be more than 1,000 trillion bits of data - to fit in a device the size of an iPod. Perhaps more importantly, the breakthrough could lead to new kinds of structures and devices that are so small they could be applied to entire new fields and disciplines beyond traditional computing.
In the second report, IBM researchers unveiled the first single-molecule switch that can operate flawlessly without disrupting the molecule’s outer frame — a significant step toward building computing elements at the molecular scale that are vastly smaller, faster and use less energy than today’s computer chips and memory devices.
In addition to switching within a single molecule, the researchers also demonstrated that atoms inside one molecule can be used to switch atoms in an adjacent molecule, representing a rudimentary logic element. This is made possible partly because the molecular framework is not disturbed.
Remember when double-sided 5 1/4″ floppies were state-of-the-art?
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