12 atom microprocessor

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16543497

My only editorial comment: f*cking insane

Currently it takes about a million atoms to store a bit on a modern hard-disk, the researchers from IBM say.

They believe this is the world's smallest magnetic memory bit.

According to the researchers, the technique opens up the possibility of producing much denser forms of magnetic computer memory than today's hard disk drives and solid state memory chips.

"Roughly every two years hard drives become denser," research lead author Sebastian Loth told the BBC. "The obvious question to ask is how long can we keep going. And the fundamental physical limit is the world of atoms. "The approach that we used is to jump to the very end, check if we can store information in one atom, and if not one atom, how many do we need?" he said.

Below 12 atoms the researchers found that the bits randomly lost information, owing to quantum effects.

They went from 1,000,000... to 12. F*cking insane.

80 TB I-Pod Shuffles by 2014 ftw. 😛

were they actually able to build a 12 atom storage device? or was that more the theoretical point where data could no longer be reliably stored due to quantum events?

Originally posted by inimalist
were they actually able to build a 12 atom storage device? or was that more the theoretical point where data could no longer be reliably stored due to quantum events?

Researchers have successfully stored a single data bit in only 12 atoms.

Unless BBC is mistaken or being intentionally misleading that suggests that they physically made a 12 atom device that can store a bit of data.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
Unless BBC is mistaken or being intentionally misleading that suggests that they physically made a 12 atom device that can store a bit of data.

weird, I didn't realize we could manipulate matter on that scale...

Originally posted by inimalist
were they actually able to build a 12 atom storage device? or was that more the theoretical point where data could no longer be reliably stored due to quantum events?

It's a little bit misleading. They apparently needed a serious cooling system to make that work, which adds a lot of atoms.

They said with 500 it could work in normal conditions, which is still an insane improvement.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
It's a little bit misleading. They apparently needed a serious cooling system to make that work, which adds a lot of atoms.

They said with 500 it could work in normal conditions, which is still an insane improvement.

not trying to disparage it at all, that is a ridiculous finding...

I was getting images in my head of somehow assembling 12 atoms into a thing, and it sort of blew my mind. I suppose I didn't realize we could do it with 500 either, but that sounds a little bit less like science fiction...

What element was used?

Unobtanium. The need for ever more efficient computers will lead us to genocide of giant smurfs.

The quantum "effects" is the Casimir Effect. It's not the effect where your Jersey Shore Girlfriend spends all of your money in Manhattan on nice clothes, either.

It's the effect that prevents us from miniaturizing our electronics beyond certain points because the surfaces of the conductive materials create a "pressure" that prevents ordering and charge flow.

There are other effects too (like the Kondo Effect...which is not where you are duped into purchasing a time share that slowly degrades in value over time), but that's the biggest one that comes to mind.

We have actually worked on and created single-atom gates with quantum-state superposition. We did this by mapping wavefunctions to an ellipsis and measuring the deformation of this fluctuation at specific energy states (fermi energy states, to be exact) as a super-cooled cobalt atom was moved across this "gate" and then they measured the changes.

So it is technically a single atom gate.

Take that 12 atom memory cell.

Originally posted by inimalist
weird, I didn't realize we could manipulate matter on that scale...

The Avogadro Project is trying to make perfect Silicon spheres so that they make scientifically define a kilogram in relation to the number of Silicon atoms or some other such faff....Anyway...Last I read the surface was only off from being perfectly smooth by a few layers of atoms...7 if I remember correctly. Might be less now.

Crazy stuff.

😎

That will just mean you can store more stuff on your computer like porn, games, movies, etc.

But what if you put it in somebodys head? Super brain!

Originally posted by Deja~vu
But what if you put it in somebodys head? Super brain!

What if you put it in your butt? Super poops!

No, there's no logical reasoning for that. I'll stick to the brain.

Originally posted by Deja~vu
No, there's no logical reasoning for that. I'll stick to the brain.

Here's the problem with your logic: what if you're a butthead? 😐

Originally posted by jaden101
The Avogadro Project is trying to make perfect Silicon spheres so that they make scientifically define a kilogram in relation to the number of Silicon atoms or some other such faff....Anyway...Last I read the surface was only off from being perfectly smooth by a few layers of atoms...7 if I remember correctly. Might be less now.

Crazy stuff.

jesus...

Jesus wouldn't like you using his name in vain like that. 👿