Every single day brings us new technology advances. This one is
about disk storage. Seagate, the hard-drive vendor, just said
that storage densities a thousand times higher than densities
available today would be available in the next five to ten
years. Hard-drive maker Seagate said it has overcome a
significant challenge in magnetic memory with a new technology
capable of achieving far beyond today's storage densities -- up
to as great as 50 terabits per square inch. Currently, the
highest storage densities hover around 50 gigabits per square
inch, but Seagate said its heat-assisted magnetic recording
(HAMR) could break through the so-called superparamagnetic limit
-- a memory boundary based on data bits so small they become
magnetically unstable. By heating the memory medium with a
laser-generated beam at the precise spot where data bits are
being recorded, HAMR dramatically increases density -- and
substantially improves the outlook for magnetic recording,
according to Seagate. Now, let's come to one of my