IBM, atomic reactions and computer memory - cool article

While this does not have a lot to do with home theaters or home automation, it's a real cool article I stumbled across and wanted to reproduce snipets of it here.  Here is the original article.

International Business Machines Corp. is developing a process that may pack more music on Apple Inc.'s iPod Nanos or make solar panels more efficient.

IBM scientists are unveiling today a technique for observing atomic reactions in real-time. It may help manufacturers make smaller devices with greater memory, Spike Narayan, an IBM researcher, said in a phone interview.

"It's easy to make things on a small scale, but to understand how things behave going down to the smaller scale, that's really what's needed," said Narayan, who manages science and technology at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California.

IBM, the world's largest computer-services provider, invested about $6 billion, or about 6 percent of its sales, in research projects last year. The company is aiming to design more efficient methods to process and store information as customers demand more computing power.

Atom Magnetism

Using a special microscope that images atoms, scientists moved an atom with voltage and measured its magnetism at various points, observing how it acted at a speed 1 million times faster than has been possible. The study enabled them to time how long an atom can hold 1 byte of data. For an iron atom on a copper surface, it was 200 nanoseconds, comparable to typical dynamic random access memory, which is used in personal computers, Narayan said.

Now scientists may use the technique to see how certain combinations hold data, and how few atoms are needed for various functions.

Observing atom's reactions in real-time also has implications outside the storage industry, Narayan said. Scientists could manipulate how atoms react to light, helping make solar panels more efficient, he said. The technique could help study how atoms in bodies consume energy, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story:Katie Hoffmann in New York at [email protected]

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