Video of ceramic storage system prototype surfaces online — 10,000TB cartridges bombarded with laser rays could become mainstream by 2030, making slow hard drives and tapes obsolete
www.techradar.com
Ceramics-based storage medium consumes very little energy and lasts more than 5,000 years, creators say

Those totally look like the isolinear chips from Star Trek

  • voodooattack@lemmy.world
    80·
    1 year ago

    Data is written by two million laser beamlets that punch QR code-like nano-scale patterns into the surface of the media. The laser pulse is sharpened by a digital micromirror device, and shaped by microscope optics onto the surface of the data carrier. This process imprints holes – or no holes – onto the surface layer, which represents binary information.

    It’s futuristic punchcards. We’ve come full circle.

      • Chobbes@lemmy.world
        15·
        1 year ago

        Pretty much, yeah! CDs and blu-rays aren’t all that different from punch cards, as the data is literally stored as indentations on the disc with a reflective layer. Arguably CD-RWs are kind of different as they change the reflectivity of a material itself… Hard drives and floppies are maaaaybe slightly different too because they use changes in magnetism instead of physical indentations too. You could probably argue that flash and DRAM aren’t glorified punchcards? But I mean, ultimately all data is stored in a physical medium somehow so it’s always going to have some resemblance!

    • jaidyn999@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year ago

      A punchcard is two dimensional. Actually you can have multiple dimensions on a punch card, the positions of the card can store different data and you can determine what that is by the position of holes on another part of the card.

      Whereas a paper tape, or a magnetic tape is serial and has only one dimension (you can divide the tape into different bands though).