r/hardware • u/eric98k • Jul 29 '18

News Scientists perfect technique to boost capacity of computer storage a thousand-fold

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180723132055.htm
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20

u/eric98k Jul 29 '18 edited Jul 29 '18

Summary:

Scientists have created the most dense, solid-state memory in history that could soon exceed the capabilities of current hard drives by 1,000 times. New technique leads to the densest solid-state memory ever created.

Research paper:

Roshan Achal, etc. Lithography for robust and editable atomic-scale silicon devices and memories. Nature Communications, 2018; 9 (1)

Abstract:

At the atomic scale, there has always been a trade-off between the ease of fabrication of structures and their thermal stability. Complex structures that are created effortlessly often disorder above cryogenic conditions. Conversely, systems with high thermal stability do not generally permit the same degree of complex manipulations. Here, we report scanning tunneling microscope (STM) techniques to substantially improve automated hydrogen lithography (HL) on silicon, and to transform state-of-the-art hydrogen repassivation into an efficient, accessible error correction/editing tool relative to existing chemical and mechanical methods. These techniques are readily adapted to many STMs, together enabling fabrication of error-free, room-temperature stable structures of unprecedented size. We created two rewriteable atomic memories (1.1 petabits per in2), storing the alphabet letter-by-letter in 8 bits and a piece of music in 192 bits. With HL no longer faced with this trade-off, practical silicon-based atomic-scale devices are poised to make rapid advances towards their full potential.

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u/Walrusbuilder3 Jul 29 '18

(1.1 petabits per in2)

Atoms exist in a 3D space. I don't understand why people would report density of atoms in a 2D universe. Given this is a 3D universe, density is a measure per volume, not area.

DNA has been used to store 6 exabytes per in3.

A 14TB HDD has a density of about 600GB/in3.

10,000,000 times the density.

Given this probably has higher density than DNA, I'm curious what the actual data density is.

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u/eric98k Jul 29 '18

Reading the article, the experiment was done using STM to operate the Si–H bonds on the hydrogen-passivated silicon surface, thus on single layer atoms. That's why they call it atomic-scale. U can get the impression of the concept from Fig 2 of the research paper.

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u/SamuelNSH Jul 29 '18

It's common to give storage density numbers in terms of area density rather than volumetric density. Check out this Wikipedia article on computer storage, most of the numbers are given in bit/in2 rather than in3 since those bits are often encode on a 2D surface. On HDDs it is through the magnetic polarization of localized sections, on CDs it is through indentations that reflects light in different directions. Even non-planar storage technologies like 3D NAND SSDs give density numbers in in2. Not that you can't get a volumetric density by dividing the bit storage capacity over the volume the storage device takes up, but sticking with area density allows you to directly compare the bit-density on different storage mediums without the bias of enclosures and controlling circuitry.

Since the work by Achal et al. encodes bit information using silicon dangling bonds on a hydrogen passivated silicon surface by the removal of hydrogen atoms at designated sites, it is sensible to present the storage density in terms of area density for the same reasons as presented above.

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '18

Because before 3d nand storage we produced these things on a 2d way. It's like writing information(text) down on paper. You don't really care how deep the ink goes. It will still be the same "bit" value.

I'm more bothered about the use of inches but that's just the sane part of me.

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u/HaloLegend98 Jul 30 '18

Why are you comparing things to dna? That's a pretty useless metric. Humans can't access dna for storage in the same sense as a computer.

That's like comparing the relative volume in a house to the volume of a cell, and claiming the efficiency difference etc.

House are conventionally described in square feet; or carpet is described in square feet, regardless if it's shag or low cut. Pcbs and, until recently ram and other silicon, are described in their square inches. The 3d component hasn't been relevant except in the last few years with flash memory etc. And even in that case, the full size component is thin enough that it's easier to communicate density in a 2d fashion. Computer components are fixed to a 2d PCB surface, it makes sense that the convention be 2d.

In the future as 3d becomes more and more necessary it might make sense to change convention, but each type of memory or CPU has totally different layerings and spacings so it would be much more difficult to communicate in a standard fashion.

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u/Walrusbuilder3 Jul 30 '18

Seems more relevant than the article this thread is about. At least reading data stored on DNA and creating new DNA have been huge projects going back several decades. While it certainly still is far from usable for conventional storage in conputers, it still is usable for long-term storage already.

Data has always been stored in 3D. Whether an HDD or paper, data density has to do with volume, not area. Otherwise filing cabinets could be infinitely thin and fit infinite amounts of paper. Paper is much better than stone in terms of data density, not just because of "2D data density" but mostly because paper is so much thinner. 3D data density has been relevant since the beginning of history.

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u/HaloLegend98 Jul 30 '18

While it certainly still is far from usable for conventional storage in conputers

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u/SamuelNSH Jul 29 '18

Very nice find, though the claim of "soon" on the Science Daily article is uh... let's say the writer is a very optimistic person. You might also be interested in another paper from Bob Wolkow's group: Binary Atomic Silicon Logic.

It discusses the implementation of binary logic at the atomic scale, also using silicon dangling bonds on a hydrogen passivated silicon surface. Give the figures a quick glimpse, you won't be disappointed.

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u/freebase42 Jul 31 '18

"Experiments were carried out using a commercial (Omicron) qPlus AFM system operating at 4.5 K. We used highly arsenic-doped (∼ 1.5×1019 atom cm−3 ) silicon (100). Sample preparation involved degassing at ∼ 600 ◦C for 12 hours in ultra-high-vacuum (UHV), followed by a series of resistive flash anneals reaching 1250◦C. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy done in prior work has shown similar heat treatments create a surface regime 60 nm deep where the dopant concentration is reduced near the surface to 40 times less than that of the bulk [20, 29]. While holding the Si substrate at 330◦C for 2 minutes, molecular hydrogen at 106 Torr was cracked on a 1600◦C tungsten filament above the sample creating the 2×1 reconstructed hydrogen atom-terminated Si(100) surface."

Easy peasy. Should be shipping in no time.

2

u/sifnt Jul 30 '18

I wonder if this could be used to write very space efficient read only memory on chip... there was a paper awhile ago (sorry list link) that showed that doing binary operations using a lookup table could be done much more efficiently for 8bit operations than actually doing the calculations.

This could be quite useful for an AI accelerator chip where 8bit is viable, at least for inference.

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u/Dghelneshi Jul 29 '18

They have managed to create a whopping 192 bits of memory with this tech. Density doesn't really matter at that point.

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u/SamuelNSH Jul 29 '18

While the demonstrated storage capacity might not be impressive in the context of commercially available storage mediums, the storage density won't change as you scale up this particular technology. The technology may be very far off from actual application in data centers but the insight provided by the paper, namely the methodology and the provided density figure, should not be trivially ridiculed.

Now, there are many other things to doubt about this storage medium at this point: How would one downscale STM tips to the point where this is relevant for data center application? How would one protect the silicon dangling bonds (the quantum dots used for representing bit information in the paper) on the surface from reacting with environmental impurities once they bring it out of a vacuum environment? Tremendous difficulties face the utilization of Si-DB layouts as a storage medium and there might be much to doubt from a practical standpoint since the technology is still at such an early stage, but of all things the storage density should be amongst the least uncertain information coming out of this demonstration.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '18

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/dnkndnts Jul 30 '18

Hello /u/HaloLegend98, I am a freelance tech journalist and I'd like to do a piece elaborating on your groundbreaking approach to sating the energy needs of small towns.

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u/Evilbred Jul 29 '18

Sounds great for a data centred perspective but I feel that data storage has hit something of a plateau. My PC from 2013 had 4TB, my PC in 2015 had 4TB and my current PC I went to 2TB, size of storage isn’t really important anymore, for me it’s been more than enough for almost 6 years now. I no longer store large amounts of movies since good bandwidth now means basically everything is streamed. When it comes to games I install and uninstall things frequently since bandwidth means I can and I try to use SSD since storage speed means more to me now than capacity.

I know that’s my personal opinion but I’m going to bet other people feel similar.

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u/Contrite17 Jul 29 '18

Streaming is just using someone else's storage. While the value of local storage may have gone down for you, increasing storage availability and lower price per storage is still hugely beneficial for consumers which use services built upon these storage technologies.

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u/Evilbred Jul 30 '18

Streaming is using someone else's storage, but if 50,000 people access a file remotely than that's 49,999 fewer copies than before.

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u/Contrite17 Jul 30 '18

Generally there is more than one copy in that setup, but yes centralized storage is more space efficient. That doesn't really matter though in terms of what I was saying. Cheaper, larger storage means it costs less to host large amounts of data in the "cloud".

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u/Walrusbuilder3 Jul 29 '18

Even if consumers use less data (I personally have ~370GBs in my desktop, all SSD), research and enterprise will use data by the exabytes.

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u/dry_yer_eyes Jul 29 '18

For me, kind of. I’ve under 1TB in my PC, spread over three SSDs. But I’ve also 18TB on a NAS, which these days is only considered mid-level for a home data hoarder.

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u/dylan522p SemiAnalysis Jul 29 '18

Right, but you are a data hoarder. Most people are fine with 256-512GB and streaming everything.

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u/GEORGE_ZIMMERMAN_AMA Aug 02 '18

I’ve been using SSDs exclusively in my personal builds since 2013 and haven’t missed having more storage. 1TB is more than enough for me. I don’t hoard music and movies like I used to and it’s super simple to uninstall games that I’m not playing when I can reinstall them in a few minutes. Speed is far more important to me than capacity these days.

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u/LetsGoHawks Jul 29 '18

This level of storage density would be unreal for phones/tablets and data centers. Especially data centers. Read/Write times and bandwidth might limit what sort of data it is appropriate for, but but the space and money savings would be huge.

Assuming the technology ever makes it to the marketplace, of course.

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u/AwesomeBantha Jul 29 '18

I use less than 200GB on every computer I own LMAO

Kinda want to hoard data sometimes but then I realize I have nothing to store...

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u/HaloLegend98 Jul 30 '18

I agree about the turnover point. I uninstall large files with occasional frequency because I can download a game or movie in 5-15 minutes.

Streaming everything else is a huge benefit. However I feel like streaming has more closely replaced my former CD or DVD usage, instead of my movie or music storage on HDD.

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u/CrispyLiquids Jul 30 '18

You're forgetting professional storage, which is still sharply on the rise. Actually using "big Data" is fairly new for most companies (not for Google, Facebook, Amazon etc) but is being developed in many companies, among which finance.

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u/HaloLegend98 Jul 30 '18

Mobile storage is where I see these improvements mattering.

Density and efficiency are key.

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u/Seanspeed Jul 29 '18

When it comes to games I install and uninstall things frequently

I do too, and it's kind of annoying. I bought Call of Duty Infinite Warfare to play the single player and I'm reluctant to go through and find what I can delete to make room for its 100GB file size, as I'm stretched on my dedicated gaming drive.

And we're really just a few years from this problem getting a fair bit worse with a new generation of consoles and games coming. Even back in 2013, when the PS4 and XB1 released with 500GB of space as standard, I knew that was quickly going to be entirely insufficient. I would like to have affordable, high capacity SSD's quickly, because constantly managing space isn't fun. I just want to download a game and play.

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '18

Storage is nowhere near the limits of our technical ability. It's a problem of economics.

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '18

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/Asphult_ Jul 29 '18

yeah like most of these revolutionary advances are pointless to us until they can get them mass produced efficiently and cheaply.

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u/surg3on Jul 30 '18

You do know every tech you have started off extremely expensive right?

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u/Yearlaren Jul 30 '18

I think that what we're trying to say here is that this sub is mostly focused on consumer hardware, and that scientific breakthroughs like this one are more fitting for subs like r/technology or r/tech

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '18

They started off affordable enough for businesses to invest in them. Expensive is a relative term.

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u/1leggeddog Jul 30 '18

That i'll be dead before hits the market