IBM researchers have created a storage device that holds up to a trillion bits of information, or about 25 million textbook pages in a postage stamp-size area, as the push to find new storage technologies rolls on.
The experimental prototype, part of an ongoing nanotechnology-research project code-named Millipede, is a chip containing more than 1,000 heated spikes that can make, or read, tiny indentations in a polymer film, said Peter Vettiger, the Millipede project leader.
Like punch cards in the computers of old, the pattern of the indentations--measuring 10 nanometers each--essentially is the digitized version of the data meant to be stored. The minute size of the indentations, though, means that Millipede chips are 20 times more densely packed with information than current hard drives. With this, cell phones could hold up to 10GB of data.