HDDs to store 5x more zeroes & ones
We’ve been writing about the next generation computer digital data storage quite often these days. An interesting advancement in boosting the storage capacity of the regular hard disk drives may allow 5 fold gains. ‘The Science‘ published an article that describes the new technique developed by the engineers
at University of Texas. This new technique involves ‘block copolymers’
which are self-organising substances. Researchers are already performing
real world tests of this new technology in association with HGST – a Western Digital company.
The current production method for HDDs involve writing zeroes and ones as magnetic dots on a continuous surface. Now the density of this dots determines how much data can be stored on the disk. The more closer the dots are the more data can be accumulated. But the proximity of these dots has already maxed out and in most modern HDDs, the dots are so close that it’s impossible to bring them closer without having their magnetic fields interfere with each other. Current production standards allow 1 TB per square inch of data storage.
There’s however a way to address this issue. If the dots are isolated from each other so that there is no magnetic field between them, then the dots can be pushed together without causing any stability issues. Block copolymers seem to provide an ideal solution to achieve this. These copolymers self-assemble themselves into highly regular patterns of dots and lines. This process is also called directed self-assembly (DSA) and it was pioneered by University of Wisconsin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The team of researchers have been able to form the smallest dots of the block copolymers that form the right shapes within a minute – which is a record. The team is hopeful of having this time brought down under 30 seconds. As the technology matures, we’ll soon have hard disks with several terabytes of capacity.
The current production method for HDDs involve writing zeroes and ones as magnetic dots on a continuous surface. Now the density of this dots determines how much data can be stored on the disk. The more closer the dots are the more data can be accumulated. But the proximity of these dots has already maxed out and in most modern HDDs, the dots are so close that it’s impossible to bring them closer without having their magnetic fields interfere with each other. Current production standards allow 1 TB per square inch of data storage.
There’s however a way to address this issue. If the dots are isolated from each other so that there is no magnetic field between them, then the dots can be pushed together without causing any stability issues. Block copolymers seem to provide an ideal solution to achieve this. These copolymers self-assemble themselves into highly regular patterns of dots and lines. This process is also called directed self-assembly (DSA) and it was pioneered by University of Wisconsin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The team of researchers have been able to form the smallest dots of the block copolymers that form the right shapes within a minute – which is a record. The team is hopeful of having this time brought down under 30 seconds. As the technology matures, we’ll soon have hard disks with several terabytes of capacity.
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