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back to article BATMAN LASER builds smaller, faster hard drives

Swiss boffins working at the Paul Scherrer Institute have explained a mechanism allowing magnetic bits to be switched using lasers, and have turned up an accidental nano-scale Batman logo. The boffins, as part of an international team with collaborators in Germany, the Netherlands and Japan, reckon their work could let storage …

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  1. LaeMing
    Coat

    Instead of zeros and ones...

    ...they use NANAs and nanas.

    5 0 Reply
  2. Thorne

    It works because....

    I'm Batman

    3 0 Reply
  3. Mark 85
    Pirate

    A copyright violation on every "square"..

    I wonder if DC Comics will lob a sueball at someone for this? Or thank them for the free advertising?

    2 0 Reply
  4. frank ly

    Questions for somebody who knows

    How does the areal density of this compare with current 'high spec' hard drives? Can the magnetic state be read with the laser as well as be written? I'm wondering how much more development is needed before we might see them for sale.

    0 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Questions for somebody who knows

      Current record for a production drive AFAIK is Segate with 826 billion bits per square inch. I'll leave it to you to do the math for comparison, but the article says they think they can improve this technique to compete/beat existing technology so clearly it is not competitive currently.

      0 0 Reply
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Looks more like a tie fighter

    Than a Batman logo.

    0 0 Reply
  6. cortland

    Hmm

    Looks like resonance. Phonons or surface wave.

    0 0 Reply

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