Free Republic

a, Dual-beam configuration for super-resolution writing and reading. b, Spin-coating process for material addition, material diffusion and blank-disk molding. c, The capacity of a single 3D nanoscale disk is approximately equivalent to that of a petabit-level Blu-ray library or an HDD data array. Credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06980-y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A team of photonic engineers affiliated with several institutions in China has developed a new type of optical DVD that is capable of holding up to a petabyte of data. The group used a new material to coat the DVDs and new laser techniques to write data. The results are published...

At InfoDocket there is a story describing the project to digitize the Vatican Library.Get this! EMC Corporation has today announced that it is providing 2.8 petabytes of storage to help the Vatican Apostolic Library digitize its entire catalogue of historic manuscripts and incunabula (a book or pamphlet printed before 1501). One of the oldest libraries in the world, the Vatican Apostolic Library holds many of the rarest and most valuable documents in existence including the 42 line Latin Bible of Gutenberg, the first book printed with movable type and dating between 1451 and 1455. Do you remember “Doc’s” reaction to...

Enlarge Image Laser-induced switching. Experimental images showing two small domains with magnetic orientation up (white) and down (black). Each laser pulse reverses the direction repeatedly. Credit: Johan Mentink; Richard Evans (inset) An ultrashort heat pulse can predictably flip a bit in a magnetic memory like the one in your hard drive. The surprising effect could ultimately lead to magnetic memories hundreds of times faster and more energy efficient than today's hard drives. It also provides a way to control the direction in which a bit is magnetized without applying something else that has a direction, such as a magnetic...

f you think you have gigantic storage problems with your computer data, think again. The experiments at CERN are generating a staggering 1 Petabyte of information every second of each experiment running on the Large Hadron Collider. I don’t know what they pay the IT staff there, but I’m sure it isn’t nearly enough. "To analyse this amount of data you need the equivalent of 100,000 of the world’s fastest PC processors. CERN provides around 20 per cent of this capability in our datacentres, but it’s not enough to handle this data," he said.