The company that began the computer generation, but has remained on the back-burner of headlining development for several years is back in the game big time.
IBM has announced that its scientists are one step closer to developing true computer nano technology on the atomic level.
Their new creation called “magnetic anisotropy” would be able to harness the power of a single atom by directing it to be the building block for uber-small storage devices. The building blocks would be thousands of time smaller the size of a single human hair in width and capable of storing the equilvalent of over 30,000 two-hour movies on a device no bigger than today’s Apple iPod.
“One of the most basic properties that every atom has is that it behaves like a little magnet,” said Cyrus Hirjibehedin, a scientist at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California.
“If you can keep that magnetic orientation stable over time, then you can use that to store information. That is how your hard drive works,” Hirjibehedin said in a telephone interview.
“What we are trying to understand is how this fundamental property works for a single atom.”
“What we’ve been able to do is to look at an iron atom on a copper surface and to move that magnetic orientation around,” said Andreas Heinrich, one of the scientists on the team. “In the very long run, we’re shooting for data storage on a very tiny scale.”
In another discovery from IBM, its labs in Zurich, Switzerland have found a way to manipulate molecules to switch on and off, a basic function needed in computer logic, further advancing the future of nano-computing.
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