Advanced. High-tech. Memory.
Above is an old hard drive – not a computer but just the internal component for rotating data storage – that weighs twenty pounds and cost nearly ten thousand dollars. It held about 350 megabytes of data (one-third as much as my keychain drive) and consumed more power than a typical computer does today.
Below is a 1 Terabyte data storage chip about the size of a dime
How much is a terabyte? It’s a stack of roughly one-thousand, four-hundred CD’s, each one burned completely full. (Or nearly three thousand of those enormous hard drives you see above, weighing as much as ten Ford Excursion SUV’s.)
The chip is practically non-volatile; it holds its data on only a half microamp at five volts. Suffice it to say that kind of power is not hard to come by. It is faster than your hard drive – by far – and even with write operations, uses so little power it’s hardly worth accounting (2.5 microamps at 5 volts).
The devices made possible by this technology are fairly mind-boggling, but the important thing to remember is that when data storage becomes essentially free (not only in money, but in physical space, weight, and power requirements) then the meta-data – information about the data that allows us to find the data and use it – becomes like the other blade in a pair of scissors. You really can’t say which is more important.
Welcome to the Google future, everyone.
(via email from Pete)
Just what I need… I’ve got more information than I can use now.
Seriously, the availability of even more vast amounts of data will require a huge jump in the skills necessary to organize, evaluate and distill information.
Then there is the issue of focus and attention span. I believe there is a theory that the rise in ADD-type symptoms is related to increased visual stimulation in infants, toddlers/young children. Whether or not this turns out to be true, I wonder about how an avalanche of data affects us. I’m not saying to stop the progress of technology and the access it gives us. Just wondering about the phenomenon of unintended and/or unforseen consequences.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The folks writing the operating systems of tomorrow are already thinking about the looming data management issues in the near future. Windows Vista will supposedly have a whole new filing system that will organize your data in virtual folders and will include some pretty intensive search functions. And Apple’s OS X is already starting to develop new means of finding your data.
The real concerns about this sort of data storage is likely to be corporate espionage. Being able to carry around multiple terabytes of data on chips the size of dimes should be giving some security folks nightmares.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The folks writing the operating systems of tomorrow are already thinking about the looming data management issues in the near future.”
Given the way a large (huge? majority?) number of users currently struggle with basic operations of Windows, I’m still not optimistic. I haven’t observed OS-X users lately, but I’d guess they are at least somewhat more savvy.
It’s interesting how much the big hard drive looks like, well, a big hard drive. With handles. I guess I would have expected a big cylinder. They say things get refined until they really can’t get any better, and then there’s a change to a completely different design. Maybe going from spinning platters to no-moving-parts pen drives is an example of this.
Are you sure the 1TB thing is on the level? The website makes several grandiose claims backed up only by a few patents and their presence at a trade show.
I’m reasonably sure they have working prototypes, but you aren’t the only one asking that question. I think this article at TRN is a description of the underlying principle and as I understand it those data densities are quite possible. I’ve been watching quantum-optical research for a while now.
If they succeeded, they’d vaporize Intel and Micron in the memory sector. But many inventors succeed technologically and are then succeeded in the marketplace by the companies that actually know how to make and market salable products. That’s what is likely to happen to them as they don’t seem very good at presenting things in a strong manner.
If you add three years to their timetable, someone will have it on the market. Probably not them.