30,000 Movies On A Divice The Size Of An iPod

clipped from www.sciam.com IBM Nanotech Breakthroughs Point To Tech's Future Building Blocks New research explores using atoms and molecules to pack more data storage and computing capabilities into smaller spaces. Researchers at the company's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., report in Science that magnetic anisotropy could eventually be used to store information in individual atoms, paving the way to pack as much as 150 trillion bits of data per square inch, 1,000 times more than current data storage densities. In other words, the ability to store data in individual atoms could lead to devices capable of storing the equivalent of 30,000 movies in a device the size of an iPod.