Millipede is a non-volatile computer memory stored on nanoscopic pits burned into the surface of a thin polymer layer, read and written by a MEMS-based probe. It promises a data density of more than 1 terabit per square inch (1 gigabit per square millimeter), which is about the limit of the perpendicular recording hard drives.
Millipede storage technology is being pursued as a potential replacement for magnetic recording in hard drives, at the same time reducing the form-factor to that of flash media. IBM demonstrated a prototype millipede storage device at CeBIT 2005, and was trying to make the technology commercially available by the end of 2007. At launch, it would probably be more expensive per-megabyte than prevailing technologies, but this disadvantage is hoped to be offset by the sheer storage capacity that Millipede technology would offer.
Famous quotes containing the word memory:
“When he became all eye when one was present, and all memory when one was gone; when the youth becomes the watcher of windows, and studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage, when no place is too solitary, and none too silent.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)