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SCIENTISTS AT TRINITY College Dublin (TCD) have made a breakthrough that could increase computer disk capacity by 1,000-fold.
The groundbreaking research at TCD’s CRANN Institute could lead to lengthy and complex calculations, such as database searches, being performed at incredibly high speeds.
A team lead by Professor Stefano Sanvito has discovered a new way to make molecular magnets more rigid, allowing them to operate at room temperature – something researchers have been trying to do for over 30 years.
Molecular magnets are tiny molecules, often comprising only a handful of atoms, which display the same properties of conventional magnets.
If molecular magnets were to be used in hard-disk drives, there is the potential to increase the disk’s capacity up to a thousand times, so that a standard 3.5’ hard-disk would store more than 1,000,000 gigabytes of data. This is because molecular magnets can be packed together at ultra-high density.
At present, a hypothetical hard-disk made of magnetic molecules will lose all data unless cooled down to about -200 Celsius.
‘Very exciting’
Sanvito described the breakthrough as “very exciting”. It has been detailed in a paper published in the Nature Communications journal.
“[It] is of huge interest to the scientific community, who have demonstrated very slow progress to date with the development of molecular magnets that can operate at room temperature. When a magnet is small its magnetic properties degrade rapidly with temperature.
“In this paper, we have shown that a drastic improvement in the high-temperature properties of magnetic magnets can be achieved by engineering the molecules to be as rigid as possible,” Sanvito said.
He added that the discovery offers real potential for very powerful quantum computers, which “may one day revolutionise computation as we know it”.
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Hurry up Trinity. I’ve only 50gig left on my laptop!
Well done TCD for bringing such talent to ireland for us to learn from.
Well done to the buckos. Best leave the maths to them though; 1000 times more isn’t 1000%. I know it’s been a while since maths week but it should be more like 100,000%
@thejournal Ladz you need a new bank of images for yez er stories – http://www.thejournal.ie/paedophiles-cybercrime-netherlands-3270279-Mar2017/
Latency would be a major issue on a mechanical drive at that capacity and it isn’t mentioned.
@Keith D’Arcy: Finally got an SSD and now it’s a laugh hearing the storage drives spin up… Can’t justify an upgrade for at least another year or so.
Supercooled solutions rarely catch on unless there’s a crucial application. Maybe we can use them for archiving stuff in space?! For other impractical solutions see holographic, chlorine and liquid storage. That’s not to diminish the discovery, lest we fall into the trap of futurism. All of the ones I’ve mentioned are incredible feats of engineering.
The point here is that it operates at room temperature. I’m sure it would fit nicely into a tiered storage scenario where the high IOPS and often accessed data could sit on Flash. It’s bloody amazing in my head anyway.
Pffft….. they did this on Blue Peter 30 years ago using toilet rolls and double sided sticky tape.
I would fear that the use of these drives as the norm is nearing its end date. Solid state drives are becoming cheaper by the month. All this may be at the very best be a few years to late. Great science all the same, well done lads and lasses.
Not really. Solid state might be the way forward in personal computing but for servers etc a mechanical drive with 1000 times the capacity for say 10 times the cost is pretty attractive.
All in the computer and nothing in the head
More Vapourware to get hopes up and then it never materialises. Ill file with the articles from 10 years ago about breakthrough batteries that will have laptops running 50 hours on a charge
These research breakthroughs are constantly trumpeted from cancer cures, driverless this and that, space travel, robots and super computers and then we never hear anymore years later!…maybe each claim should come with a fact check and likely launch date if any.
Need for speed????
I’m still on my 13 year old laptop, running winXP (win95 if I could). Google Chrome tells me to update. It’s as slow as a wet day but I get by.
It does all I need it to do >> most times.
It’s me that needs more speed not the PC
Good for a new Nassau Street care might be ‘YottaBites”. Customers could find it magnetic. Molecular gastronomy. Sorry. This is the age of big data. Autonomous cars alone will likely 4000 GB a day. Timely invention and huge credit to the researchers and university.
@John O’Driscoll: sorry meant good name for a cafe. tablet keyboard
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