Japanese Researchers Set New Record In Ferroelectric Storage

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We all know that, right now, it’s the hard drive and the solid state drive currently brawling for supremacy in the data storage market. But there’s something new being worked up that might change the way you store data. It’s called ferroelectric storage, and Japanese researchers just made a world record for data storage with it.

How big is that record, you wonder? The new record, achieved by scientists at the Research Institute of Electrical Communication Tohaku University, represents a total storage of four trillion bits per square inch.

To put it in a little easier to follow terms, eight bits to the byte, which means about 50 gigabytes per square inch. If it continues like that, basically, what you end up with is a six by six inch platter that can store about two terabytes. When you start bringing depth calculations into play, well, that’s where my mind starts boggling.

It works by sending electrical pulses into a lithium tantalate medium, in which a positive charge is a one and a negative charge a zero, thus reducing a field of tiny dots into a huge binary expression. And here’s the worst of it–Toshiba actually put out a magnetic-based hard drive that passes that up at 2.5 terabytes per square inch. But either way, look for storage space to get lots bigger and probably not too far away.