Technical > PC Hardware Discussion/Reviews > New Hard drive tech - using heat instead.

New Hard drive tech - using heat instead.

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ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2012) — An international team of scientists has demonstrated a revolutionary new way of magnetic recording which will allow information to be processed hundreds of times faster than by current hard drive technology.

The researchers found they could record information using only heat -- a previously unimaginable scenario. They believe this discovery will not only make future magnetic recording devices faster, but more energy-efficient too.

The results of the research, which was led by the University of York's Department of Physics, are reported in the February edition of Nature Communications.

York physicist Thomas Ostler said: "Instead of using a magnetic field to record information on a magnetic medium, we harnessed much stronger internal forces and recorded information using only heat. This revolutionary method allows the recording of Terabytes (thousands of Gigabytes) of information per second, hundreds of times faster than present hard drive technology. As there is no need for a magnetic field, there is also less energy consumption."

The multinational team of scientists included researchers from Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia, Japan and the Netherlands. Experimental work was carried out at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Dr Alexey Kimel, from the Institute of Molecules and Materials, Radboud University Nijmegen, said: "For centuries it has been believed that heat can only destroy the magnetic order. Now we have successfully demonstrated that it can, in fact, be a sufficient stimulus for recording information on a magnetic medium."

Modern magnetic recording technology employs the principle that the North pole of a magnet is attracted to the South pole of another and two like poles repulse. Until now it has been believed that in order to record one bit of information -- by inverting the poles of a magnet -- there was a need to apply an external magnetic field. The stronger the applied field, the faster the recording of a magnetic bit of information.

However, the team of scientists has demonstrated that the positions of both the North and South poles of a magnet can be inverted by an ultrashort heat pulse, harnessing the power of much stronger internal forces of magnetic media.

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I don't see it as an SSD killer automatically. How finely focused can they make this heat pulse? This would directly relate to how much data can be recorded per unit area. Also, since this is still a recording media, there will continue to be latency and data contiguity issues.

However, the potential seems obvious for some very interesting, breakthrough devices!
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reply to FizzyMyNizzy
I don't think it'll kill SSD's because if the disk is spinning just by the nature of movement it'll take a little bit of time to get to the data.

it could make them less apealing slightly

but I wonder if its just able to flip the pole how does it verify the current position of the pole? and does this help read speed or just write?

reply to FizzyMyNizzy
That's all fine and dandy. But it does you no good unless you can read what you just wrote. That information is curiously missing......Once they figure that out then Ill start getting excited.

For now it looks likea 5-10+ year tech, ie they likely have some more to sort out before they can make a saleable product

can you imagine having a drive that can write at Gigabytes per sec but can only read at a few hundred megabytes per second?

reply to FizzyMyNizzy
The right kind of LASER, focused down, could do this. When focused enough, the power of a LASER pulse can grow beyond measure.

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A multinational team of scientists have discovered a new method to store data magnetically that is hundreds of times faster than current hard drives are capable of. Data is stored on a traditional spinning hard drive by applying an external magnetic field that inverts the polarity on the media (representing a zero or a one), thus recording a single bit each time the external field is introduced.

The new method demonstrated by the research team uses a laser that fires for 1/10,000 of a nanosecond and generates enough heat to successfully change the polarity on the media. Dr. Alexey Kimel from the Institute of Molecules and Materials noted that for centuries, it was believed that heat could only destroy the magnetic order but now it has been proven to be a sufficient stimulus for recording information on a magnetic medium.

The Register points out that using a laser in this manner isn’t entirely new as TDK has been a using heat-assisted magnetic recording system in a similar way, although the new technique is much faster than any competing technology.

The end result is the ability to record terabytes of data per second and because there is no need for a magnetic field, there is also less energy consumed.

The technology is still a long way from commercialization, however. The results were so unexpected that even the scientists who discovered the method aren’t entirely sure how or why it works. It will also be a challenge to embed a powerful enough laser onto a read head of a hard drive without drawing too much power, says ZDNET.

The team’s findings have been published in the February edition of Nature Communications.

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reply to FizzyMyNizzy
The intensity and focus is part of it, but the pulse width (duration) is another. In school we were tasked with finding ways to shorten pulses to pretty short moments. We used krytrons and SCRs. I wonder how the scientists did it... Making a brief enough pulse will be a cost challenge...
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reply to FizzyMyNizzy
Would like to know what LASER they are using. Perhaps an infrared because they are better at producing heat, but, OTOH, it is a longer wavelength, though that probably isn't as critical...

As mentioned, read speed needs help too. Though in my fantasies the field effect is somehow read optically, so maybe, maybe it could give an SSD a big run for the money.

Ever heard of LASER tweezers? I don't remember the exact article, but scientists, many years ago, used two LASER beams to manipulate an atom like a pair of tweezers. A lot of amazing things can be done in optics. I am not at liberty to discuss some of what I've "seen", but things thought impossible can be possible in optics.

Want to experience a mind futz? Read Jenkins and White's book Fundamentals of Optics and see how wave optics science works. Illogical, but true stuff...

Mind you, I can hardly remember anything I learned, and boy have things changed since those days. We fantasized when I was in school about blue diode LASERs. We spent an hour in a class talking about how it might be done. Heh, man, how far we've come...
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Join Teams Helix and Discovery. Rest in Peace, Leonard David Smith, my best friend, you are missed badly! Rest in peace, Pop, glad our last years were good. Please pray for Colin, he has ependymoma, a brain cancer, donate to a children's Hospital.

WARNING: Do not watch the video if you have seizure.

reply to FizzyMyNizzy
1064... ND:YAG.

I did some frequency tripling with them, some burning. IIRC, they are also used on diamonds. The ND:YAG LASER is a solid crystal LASER. The ruby was the first such LASER.

Now much is done with diodes. Diodes are used as the excitation medium in a lot of stuff today, so huge devices are now almost compact...

ND LASERs come in other chemical forms, too, not just yttrium-aluminum-garnet...
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Join Teams Helix and Discovery. Rest in Peace, Leonard David Smith, my best friend, you are missed badly! Rest in peace, Pop, glad our last years were good. Please pray for Colin, he has ependymoma, a brain cancer, donate to a children's Hospital.

Looks like more people are talking about this:
»www.guru3d.com/news/hdds-could-b···-faster/

reply to FizzyMyNizzy
I wonder...

Could the magnetic properities be test in thermal states? OTW, could a polarity change affect the reflected temperature?

So many possibilities...