Need an undegradable 2TBs?

Hmm...how does this relate to gaming...

Uhh... Oh, SUPER FAST LOAD TIMES! Who am I kidding? NO LOAD TIMES! Here is the technology that + "The Grid" = Every computer is a server in the CLOUD.

Drive never degrades, unlimited reads/writes, better in every way than SSDs and Hard Disks!

The Caveat?

WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY! We just don't have the commercial manufacturing tools needed to get it to consumers. IBM is confident this is the Next Big Thing(tm) in storage, but we probably wont be seeing it for at least 4 or 5 years. That is, unless some young upstart wants to capitalize on the tech and take the storage market by storm.

Terabyte tooth filling, anyone?

DailyTech: http://www.dailytech.com/IBM+Cooks+Up+Replacement+For+NAND+Hard+Drives/article11465.htm

-- Sensationalist Tech News --
brought to you by: StormEffect.

 

This sounds to me like one of those things that would be oh so cool if only you didn't need an electron microscope and an advanced physics degree to read out the data. I hope I'm wrong though.

 

According to the article, the "read/write" head is stationary while the "racetrack" of electrons pass it. Its like the fasttrack lane on the highway reading your fasttrack ID, with an additional ability to write to the ID instead of just read it.

 

So how exactly does the data transfer to/from the storage medium (the RaceTrack) and the read/write head? According to wikipedia, it seems like some limited application of spintronics is already used in current hard drive read/write heads, but I'm still not 100% clear on how it actually works.

 

Again, according to the article and my weak understaning, the data is continually moving along a nanowire in the form of electrons, similar to how data on our hard disks are continually moving on the spinning platters. Theoretically, the data is passing the finish line (read/write head) almost instantaneously at every moment, meaning that whenever data needs to be accessed or written, the head waits for the appropriate electron to pass and modifies or reads it as it is going by. The electron represents its state (1 or 0, theoretically) by reporting its spin information, clockwise or counterclockwise in simple terms (without taking into account both).

Essentially, in this form, the data is encoded into electrons in a wire loop rather than switches on a hard drive platter.

 

Yeah, I get that. But what force is trnasferring the data from the spin of the electron to the voltage in the read/write head? When you talk about a megnetic disk, you have the electromagnetic interaction between the current in the head and the charge on the disk. On an SSD, the data is stored in electic charge (to my understanding), so it's basically already the same "language" as the rest of the system. How does the data on the RaceTrack media translate from the spin of the electron to the different voltages that represent the data within a standard computer system?

I get the concept of how the data is stored and how it continually moves along the track. The problem comes in how you get it OFF or IN TO the track.

 

makes sense, does it store data when you turn it off?

 

I keep reading over the article and can't find a direct answer. From the diagram it looks as though spin is "read" magnetically, but I can't decipher "write"". It looks as if the head is squishing against the wire and changing its polarity, though, so I'd assume it is also a magnetic method.

Yeah, so I guess technically the read/write technology is exactly the same as what you'd find in a hard drive.

Electrons don't ever stop spinning. So no power is needed to keep the data stored. This also means that you can write/read an infinite number of times, because electrons don't break like NAND or Hard drive silicon.

 

If they`ll make a super fast type of hdd, they got my vote.
Until then,they`re just spreading BS.

 

Problem is that it sounds like it needs a charge to retain data.

 

According to the article, it does not need a charge to retain data.

 

It doesn't need a charge to retain the data, but it needs power to keep the data moving along the nanowire. The storage media is basically the same idea as a magnetic tape, but instead of charge on tape, it uses the spin of electrons in the nanowire to store the data. Just like a magnetic tape, the data is stored wether the drive is powered or not, but can't be read unless you can move the tape along.

 

What sirmetman said.

If anyone can show me a data storage medium that doesn't require power to read and write data I'll be very impressed.

 

Pen and paper comes to mind

 

Your metatabolism and ATP synthesis in general would disagree with you.