IBM fits a bit on an atom, eyeing ever-smaller devices

While many IT departments grapple with big data, IBM says it has the smallest data in the world: One bit on one atom.

Researchers at IBM’s Almaden lab in San Jose, Calif., have written and read a bit of data on a single atom using magnetism, a feat they say is a world first. It could lead to storage that’s hundreds of times denser than anything available now, able to hold the entire Apple iTunes library of 35 million songs on a device the size of a credit card, the company says.

Much denser storage could also mean smaller phones, PCs, and even data centers in the future.

Current hard disk drives use about 100,000 atoms to store a bit. Other scientists have used single atoms for storage before, including in experimental devices that used the atoms’ location to store data. But magnetic storage, the technique already used in tapes, disk drives, and flash, has the advantage of being solid state, so it doesn’t require moving atoms around, said Christopher Lutz, the nanosciences researcher who led the IBM project.

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