Robotic Nation Evidence

You may have seen this week that Hitachi announced its new 400 GB hard disk: Hitachi Pushes Hard Drive to 400GB. This drive uses 5 platters and stores data at a density of 61.7 gigabits per square inch. Hard disks have been doubling in capacity for decades at a pace better than Moore's Law, but people write to me constantly to say, "it won't last -- we are about to bump into physical limits and Moore's Law will end."

IBM has announced a new technique that will help hard disk capacity continue on a Moore's Law track for several years to come: Hot Tip Boosts Disk Capacity. From the article:

Scientists at IBM Research have demonstrated a relatively inexpensive way to use heat to make it easier to write magnetic patterns on such media. The technique could make it possible to store more than one terabit per square inch... recording speeds of more than one billion bits per second, or gigahertz, are possible, according to the researchers... The researchers' prototype achieved magnetization patterns capable of storing 400 gigabits per square inch. The technique could be used practically in five to ten years.

So today's technology is storing about 60 GB per square inch. IBM has a prototype disk that can store 400 GB per square inch. That would allow the creation of 2.6 terabyte drives. One terabit per square inch would allow the creation of 7 terabyte drives.

Imagine a home computer with a $200 hard disk in it that can store 7 terabytes. If it arrives in 10 years, that would be right on schedule.

The thing about Moore's law is that there are thousands and thousands of scientists and engineers working on advancements every day. And once robots actually start adding to the creativity pool, Moore's law may even accelerate.

See also this post, this post and this one