Quote:
Originally posted by RickM
Nearby at Bell Labs they invented a glass cube that was capable of storing large amounts of data using light. Great thing was that it could be made very small becase there were no heat issues. At the time light computers were the thing to develop. Not sure where it lead.
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Last year I attended a McData Storage conference (I'm in the IT storage industry). IBM is currently working on a similar concept, where some type of plastic was the storage media. Divots on the nano-level could be melted into the plastic, and again, a nano-based 'brush' could be run across the plastic to read the 0's (smooth) and 1's (divot). The benefits of this type of storage is that it is not magnetic media, which deteriorates over time, and the plastic can be easily 'erased' and reused.
But boy, if you use a nano-level brush to paint your house -- well, that's gonna take a long time!!
I'm assuming that the glass cube that Bell is working on is similar in concept as the IBM plastic media - non-magnetic and uses nano-technology to determine a 0 or 1.
Though I am biased, I think that the storage area of IT will be where you see the newest techologies emerge.
-Z-man.