

IBM smashes Moore's Law, cuts bit size to 12 atoms - thenicepostr
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9223396/IBM_smashes_Moore_s_Law_cuts_bit_size_to_12_atoms

======
guelo
Data storage density doesn't really have anything to do with Moore's law.

~~~
lusr
It's difficult to take this article seriously given the terrible grammar and
obvious technical errors, often in the same sentence, e.g. "The researchers
then combined 96 bits make [sic] one byte of data..."; presumably "bits"
should be "atoms". Such errors make me question whether anything in the
article is accurate or being interpreted correctly.

------
archangel_one
My understanding was that Moore's law states that the number of transistors
that you get _for a given cost_ doubles every 18 months. Hence I don't think
any result shown by researchers in a lab can be said to "smash" it until a
similar technique is used in production for chips you can actually buy.

~~~
vilda
Moore's law is one of the most misinterpreted laws :)

It states that the number of transistors per INGOT SLICE will double each 18
months.

Ingot (in semiconductor manufacturing) is a slice of silicon monocrystalline
suitable for photolithographic and chemical processing. The main point is that
while transistors are getting smaller, ingot slices are getting bigger.

Edit: I mean misquoted (misinterpretation is a result).

~~~
archangel_one
Yes, I agree it's often misquoted. I don't see where it says anything about
ingot slices in his original statement (see eg.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#History>) though; I was thinking
of the statement "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at
a rate of roughly a factor of two per year", etc.

------
conanite
"The ultimate end of Moore's Law is a single atom."

That's a bit depressing. Why a single atom, and not some smaller particle?

~~~
Anderkent
From what I remember from physics lessons, going with more elementary
particles might be possible eventually, but not in any foreseeable future -
(most/some) atoms are fairly stable by themselves, while keeping a hadron-
based structure stable will probably be very difficult.

~~~
cot6mur3
Nice response. As for ultimate limits, see
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound>. Of course, this bound
doesn't really give bits per quark/particle limits - just an overall limit
based on the spherical radius of the information-storing system.

------
michaelcampbell
This seems an outlier at best; Moore's Law is an approximation, and this falls
outside it (as have many). I would say "smashing" the law would be to find
some way of manufacturing that would affect the rate of change the 18 months
figure to ... 3 months, or something radically different, in perpetuity.

------
buff-a
FTA: The experiment was performed at low temperature: about 1 degree Kelvin,
which corresponds to about -272 °C (-458 °F). The byte starts switching
randomly about once a minute due to thermal energy (heat) at about 5 degrees
Kelvin.

"low" indeed.

------
JoeAltmaier
They proved such bits may exist, but have definitely not brought anything to
market, nor even demonstrated a process to do so. They used a scanning
electron microscope to fiddle atoms around, creating one bit. A science
experiment, nothing more.

------
fadzlan
I would say that is more of delaying, rather than smashing it outright.

~~~
AndrewDucker
Moore's Law says we should be able to fit transistors into a certain amount of
space at a certain time. Getting well ahead of the curve would count as
breaking Moor's Law, I'd have thought.

