International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) has made a move that will advance the way in which data is stored in devices.
The computer giant revealed that it has stored a single bit of data by using a single atom. Current storage devices require about 100,000 atoms per bit of storage that they have within them.
This means that a device the size of a credit card could store up to 35 million iTunes songs. “Magnetic bits lie at the heart of hard-disk drives, tape and next-generation magnetic memory,” said Christopher Lutz, lead nanoscience researcher at IBM Research – Almaden in San Jose, California.
He added that IBM attempted this move to see how well you could store data if you tried to pare it down to a simple atom capable of collecting info. An electrical current was used to write a bit of information by starting at the atom-level.
The move means that the way in which data is stored could be 1,000 times denser than it is now. This information compiled by IBM was published in the scientific journal Nature.
The company has been experimenting for years with its IBM Research branch, which includes more than 3,000 researchers across 12 labs located in six different continents. Six Nobel Laureates have been created from this segment of the tech giant.
IBM stock fell 1.7% Thursday.
