Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: Laser, HDD, Read, Write | Themes: Desktop Computers
Sunday French physicists claimed that they discovered the means to boost data access of hard drives nearly 100,000 times the normal rate.
Sunday French physicists claimed that they discovered the means to boost data access of hard drives nearly 100,000 times the normal rate. The team, led by Jean-Yves Bigot of the Institute of Materials Physics and Chemistry in Strasbourg, used an ultra-fast, "femtosecond" laser to alter the electronic spin of a hard drive, thus speeding up the retrieval and storage aspects.
The new laser technology is based on "spintronics," or rather, spin transport electronics, a technology that won the 2007 Nobel physics prize. With spintronics, an electrical output is generated by the natural spin of electrons within a magnetic field. At the same time, a read/write head records and retrieves data stored on the disk. The problem with this method is that the magnetic sensors used to detect the data are rather slow; supposedly, the new laser is much faster.
"Our method is called the photonics of spin, because it is photons [particles of light] that modify the state of the electrons' magnetization on the storage surface," Bigot told AFP. He also explained that data is retrieved with a burst that lasts just a millionth of a billionth of a second.
Unfortunately, femtosecond lasers aren't available for general consumer electronics--especially in laptops and desktop computers--measuring 12-inches by four-inches in size. However, the technology may see a reduction in size within the next decade, especially if interested parties such as IBM, Hitachi and other corporations continue to show great interest.
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I don't think current bus speeds will keep up with this, but maybe in a few years.
Wow, this would be pretty odd if it came to fruition in the next decade.
I mean, we're currently moving to SSD's, and in a few years, I'm sure they'll be mainstream. But then, with these new lasers, you'd bring back HDD's for better performance, a few years later.
Jeez.
I don't think current bus speeds will keep up with this, but maybe in a few years.
Current Bus speeds can't keep up with current drive setups, and SATA 6 Gbit can be maxed out with a RAID setup.
This is something that won't be around for quite a few years anyway, so of course current bus speeds would choke.
As usual, a intentionally misleading headline.
Nothing is being accelerated. This would be a different type of HDD.
wow.. an it only took 15 years to get to: oh no actual product to demonstrate? yay?
The laser will be faster...
But what about the moving parts, the rotating platans? These mechanical parts will still slow down the entire system.
@Tindytim: This might have passed by me but you must have seen a RAID setup running on only one SATA cable. I'm pretty surprised when seeing your comment.
The article states "boosts data access" which translates to seek (access) times (random & sequential), NOT data throughput (Mbps).
I hope they dont care too much about a reduction in size. I wouldnt be bothered by having to stuff a 12x4 box inside my tower.
Anyone know why that femtosecond laser 'retrieves' data in bursts? It's because the laser needs a LOT of juice. It's called femtosecond for that reason, it can only be sustained for that long. Of course it can recharge and fire again, but that takes some time. Let me put it in prospective. Last time I checked (maybe a year ago at most) it took a femtosecond laser 30 minutes to cover the area of one side of a dime. I know that with spintronics we can achieve unprecedented data densities, but the power required will be an issue.
Article summary: Just take a bunch of hard disk terminology intermixed with physics terms, 'femto' and laser. Stir it up and attach the words to approximate English grammar.
"...alter the electronic spin of a hard drive." It would take paragraphs to describe the number of scientific errors in this phrase.
Gotta' love that 2 dimensional laser too: "12-inches by four-inches in size" Does it produce a 2 dimensional beam?
This is truly one of the worst written articles to appear on this site in a long time. There are more factual/usage errors than the number of sentences.
LOL
Femtosecond laser's are what perform Lasik surgery, just had it done a year ago, very cool tech. Course the first thing I asked the doc when I saw the machine was "That doesn't run windows does it?"
i had a few of these in the 90's but gave them to a goodwill
Gotta' love that 2 dimensional laser too: "12-inches by four-inches in size" Does it produce a 2 dimensional beam?This is truly one of the worst written articles to appear on this site in a long time. There are more factual/usage errors than the number of sentences.LOL
it's kevin parrish... guess you're not familiar with his writing style... the headline/first line thing is getting very annoying. it's almost as if he's so uncreative as to not be able to come up with a headline that isn't a copy/paste of the first line of his article... maybe it's just his shortcuts and scripts that help him come up with these 'articles' based on a few keywords that's doing it... i've seen it in call centers so why not here?
This is exactly why drilling holes in a disk does not destroy all the data; only the data that existed where the holes are. Lasers can read all remaining data even if you couldn't float heads over the drilled disks.
A less ambitious laser tech should be used for the retrieval of info on crashed disks for the business sector.
Current Bus speeds can't keep up with current drive setups, and SATA 6 Gbit can be maxed out with a RAID setup.This is something that won't be around for quite a few years anyway, so of course current bus speeds would choke.
Yes, I know. That is why I said that, but thanks anyway. Although you and I may see this as a "no kidding” point, it still needs to be said because I do see people all the time running out to get gigabit routers for a home network of only one computer and one iPod. They do not understand they can go no faster than the ISP allows. The only real benefit of that gigabit router is for file sharing on a home network, but people don't get that. Now as for the, "This is something that won't be around for quite a few years anyway" this article said in the next decade and although the past ten years has seen some good bus speed increases, it has not been anywhere near the rate of increase to match this technology in 10 years.
When the French announced this... were they snobby about it?
When the French announced this... were they snobby about it?
Too funny, I'm sure they were.
@thuan:
My point exactly...
This is something that won't be around for quite a few years anyway, so of course current bus speeds would choke.
You have this backwards current drives are not even close to true maximum output ie normal hdd's are too slow to take advantage of current bus speeds while ssd'd are faster they still don't max out the bus.
You have this backwards current drives are not even close to true maximum output ie normal hdd's are too slow to take advantage of current bus speeds while ssd'd are faster they still don't max out the bus.
Nope, when SATA 6Gbit was released, the demo had 2 SSDs in a RAID setup that got close. Which was odd.