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IBM back to the future with nanotech 'punch card'

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CIOL Bureau
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Peter Henderson

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SAN FRANCISCO: Researchers at International Business Machines Corp. have

punched holes about 6,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair in a

piece of plastic, creating a novel form of data storage.

After six years of work the Zurich-based researchers say they can fit 1

terabit of data -- effectively the contents of a 100-gigabyte computer hard

drive -- on a postage stamp-size piece of plastic.

The data takes the form of up to a trillion holes drilled by a precise and

extremely hot nano-needle, the researchers said. In the world of data storage,

dominated by disk drives which hold bits and bytes electromagnetically and flash

memory cards for Palm Pilots and digital cameras that use electrical charges,

holding information in hole-punches seems old hat.

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However, the company that preceded IBM set the world on fire 110 years ago by

making computer punch cards.

"One of our slogans is back to the future of mechanics," said Peter

Vettiger, leader of the project, called Millipede, in a telephone interview from

Zurich. His holes are 10 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, and about 3

billion of them fit in a punch card hole.

He said that in the best of circumstances, including IBM deciding to continue

the project's funding, consumers might be able to buy by late 2005 a mechanical

memory chip based on the research that would hold 5-10 gigabytes of data.

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Information, which would be translated into a binary arrangement such as

zeros and ones in other computer memory systems, is broken is broken into dots

and dashes that become holes and flat surfaces on the plastic surface of the new

chip.

The plastic sits on a piece of silicon. Hovering above it are roughly 1,000

tiny phonograph arms, each with a needle on the end. The phonograph arm is

actually made of two different materials that conduct heat differently. At 400

degrees centigrade, one side expands more than the other, bending the arm and

plunging the hot needle into the plastic, creating a hole with a lip on the

side.

Subsequently, a second plunge just to the side of the first would heat the

material and cause the initial hole to fill in, making it possible to rewrite on

a chip. To read data, the needle is heated about 100 degrees less, so that the

arm bends but the tip cannot melt the plastic. The tip then measures the

resistance between the surface and what's beneath it. A hole reads differently

than a flat area.

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Vettiger said that the technology was best for low-power, mobile situations,

since the chip works fine at speeds that are much slower than competing

technologies.

Even so, the nanotech punch-card was fast enough to supply information to a

broadband network, for instance, IBM said. With more energy, the chips can

transfer information faster, he added.

(C) Reuters Limited.

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