The 500,000 GB MP3 Player

April 18, 2008 | by Christopher Nickson

Sounds impossible? It could really happen, thanks to a new breakthrough.

Can you even imagine an MP3 player with a 500,000 GB capacity? It’s pretty much beyond belief. The most generous player today can only hold around 40,000 songs – they’d hardly make a dent on this.
The thing is, it could easily happen. Scientists at the University of Glasgow have created a nanotechnology breakthrough that could increase storage capacity by 150,000 times. It could mean 500,000 GB on a single chip and inch square.
The Glasgow scientists worked to create the molecule-sized switch that’s at the heart of it all.
Professor Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow said,
“What we have done is find a way to potentially increase the data storage capabilities in a radical way. We have been able to assemble a functional nanocluster that incorporates two electron donating groups, and position them precisely 0.32 nm apart so that they can form a totally new type of molecular switching device. The key advantage of the molecule sized switch is information / transistor density in traditional semi-conductors.  Molecule sized switches would lead to increasing data storage to say 4 Petabits per square inch. This breakthrough shows conceptually that this is possible (showing the bulk effect) but we are yet to solve the fabrication and addressing problems. The fact these switches work on carbon means that they could be embedded in plastic chips so silicon is not needed and the system becomes much more flexible both physically and technologically.”
 
The discovery was first reported in Nature Nanotechnology.

Post Your Comment...Comments

sean michael on Apr 19th, 2008 at 7:20 PM:

Thats gravy and all but what about the read/write speeds?

"required" on Apr 20th, 2008 at 7:13 PM:

Great, the sooner it hits the shelves, the sooner I can begin the long painful wait for the price to drop..

name on Apr 20th, 2008 at 7:13 PM:

Great, the sooner it hits the shelves, the sooner I can begin the long painful wait for the price to drop..

cnsword on Apr 20th, 2008 at 8:41 PM:

Too great! If I have one, I did not know that puts to be assorted in inside.

ameo on Apr 20th, 2008 at 8:44 PM:

guess it would be great we can even use it so store some other data and not just mp3 :)

pau on Apr 20th, 2008 at 8:44 PM:

that's too much of space

yy on Apr 20th, 2008 at 9:19 PM:

guess takes a month before i can fill it up with songs

and takes another decade to listen to all of them at least once.

Nick on Apr 20th, 2008 at 9:21 PM:

I agree with "name", but this seems like its a waaaaaaaaaays from hitting the shelves. It seems like they just discovered this and they already have fabrication problems.

Shounak on Apr 20th, 2008 at 9:26 PM:

ok many stuffs came and went by,but for this i realy wud wana know dat wen wil this realy be implemented and be introduced to the shelves man....pls God this is wat we all want. Cancel my Alienware for this :)

MrRaider on Apr 20th, 2008 at 9:33 PM:

You all do realize that this will never hit consumer use at all.

Asday on Apr 20th, 2008 at 9:44 PM:

Good god this comments thread is a slaughterhouse of the English language.

Tri on Apr 20th, 2008 at 9:57 PM:

That is a ton of storage i felt pretty safe with a terabyte what am i going to do with all this space. My money is that this is pretty far away and it will first be seen in databases and not your MP3 and what the first post said read/write speeds are needed as well.

pdizzie on Apr 20th, 2008 at 10:16 PM:

im constantly needing more space due to projects and ****, this is a bit over the top but you can never have too much

William Hook on Apr 20th, 2008 at 10:30 PM:

I'll believe it when I see it in my PC, and no sooner.

Dipsh1tz420 on Apr 20th, 2008 at 10:30 PM:

What you don't realize is this clearly follows established patterns in increasing computation. Namely the Law of Accelerating Returns. It generally takes 10-15 years for things to develop from the lab and trickle up to the masses. You will see this at the consumer level before 2020. For the mentally challenged, read and write speeds will not be a problem considering that things like this will be accessed by 100 core terahertz chips and likely faster and all the accompanying glittery tech. Get brains jerks.

remo on Apr 20th, 2008 at 10:56 PM:

sweet, then i can store my HD porn collection on there.

Mr Wright on Apr 20th, 2008 at 11:04 PM:

Why are there so many people posting here with absolutely no regard for grammar or spelling?

Superdonut on Apr 20th, 2008 at 11:09 PM:

Let's just hope they'll use that storage for SOUND QUALITY. How about 24bit/96k? instead of CrAPPLE'S ipod. Don't people buying downloads realize they are buying music that won't even sound decent on a crappy home stereo? It's just sickening to think about. There are a couple players out there that support lossless codecs like FLAC or APE but you can't purchase music in that format, which leaves millions STEALING music just to get CD QUALITY, and that doesn't guarantee anything. Have you heard Springsteen's MAGIC--that thing is so horribly compressed that it's unbearable at CD quality on my audiophile home system. I can just hear CrAPPLE ads saying: it holds 14 billion songs (at 32k)!!! A miracle.

Stand up for your sonic rights people! The industry is selling way-below-CD-quality-downloadable-sub-par-sonic-crap for MORE than a CD costs, yet the CD has only one or two decent songs. The industry keeps missing it. Now they are even doing it with Audio Books. (Sound Quality not as important there, but AUDIBLE's highest quality downloads are 64k, and they are selling them for MORE than the actual books, with NO OVERHEAD (except for the actor/reader, and some server space). $20-$50 for a 6-8 hour long book at 64k? That's INTOLERAUDIBLE!! They don't even tell you which translations are the classics. I'm not saying stealing is right, but I am saying the industry has done everything it can alienate itself from the public, and to discourage purchasing by offering lower quality, less selection at HIGHER PRICES.

This technology sounds amazing. Let's insist they use it in a way that conveys the beauty of music, the soul of the voice.

Sincerely,

Superdonut

Miguel Benevides on Apr 20th, 2008 at 11:14 PM:

ton of storage? too much space? WTF?
Do you have any idea how much new information is created each day? And even if we didn't care, sooner or later "they" would convince us that we really need it... I bet that Microsoft's OS around 2020 will need 500.000Gb (memory, of course) just to run a process to update itself.

Acronyms on Apr 20th, 2008 at 11:34 PM:

Viva the progress!

amator40 on Apr 21st, 2008 at 12:16 AM:

Thank you, Superdonut. And thank you for using proper english and grammar.

The myspace generation (sigh).

Lunatic Experimentalist on Apr 21st, 2008 at 12:22 AM:

The update program for Windows 2020 will need 500,000gbit of memory because all the binaries will be fractally compressed by a quantum computer.

As for the R/W speed - I would expect it to be quite fast. Nanotechnology tends to be highly parallel so it would be like RAID striping hundreds of SSDs.

pontianak on Apr 21st, 2008 at 1:20 AM:

Definitely good for storing porn.

badcop666 on Apr 21st, 2008 at 1:50 AM:

please! no more storage! it only full of all the crap typed by the cranky white guy!

no more **** blog posts! please!

he no more place to put! stop him!

Daniel on Apr 21st, 2008 at 2:50 AM:

@Asday

You do realise, it would have been better to put a comma after "Good god".

Weird.

Guardian on Apr 21st, 2008 at 3:04 AM:

Something like this would certainly make some existing technologies like CD's, DVD's, Blu-ray discs completely redundant. In fact, you could probably kiss good-bye to mechanical hard-drives and see a move to mechanical-less plug-in devices like memory cubes in much the same way that we use USB memory sticks today.
Carbon is also a much better conductor than silicon so we could probably expect to see cooler running CPU's etc.

Squibs on Apr 21st, 2008 at 5:43 AM:

The only problem so far arising is clearly fabrication problems, it's only that of the molecular formation of carbon and its use in electrical circuits, it's pretty much a newly introduced technology at this moment, but no doubt will be mastered as it will need to for any staggering technological advances.

People saying "Stooop, stop everything! It's too much storage" Are exactly the type of people that are stopping the ageing of technology. Computers need to step out their infancy and keeping them in diapers is not the way, let the baby walk, let it fall down, but it'll grow along the way and we both will benefit.

People back in the 80's didnt think they would ever use 16MB of RAM (I'm not entirely sure of the amounts back then, I'm only 17) but look at us now, real money bags and technologically inclined people are chewing up 4GB and even 8GB (which I admit, is overkill). So we shouldnt live with the mentality "It's too big", these technologies need tested, proofed and patented before their release anyway rendering this technologies release in at least 2 years? (although we wont see it for longer).

As for read/write speeds, being flash, it should be slower than physical drives but then again, this could be picked up on?

I can only give respect to the likes of Superdonut who stands for something in technology.

Let the baby walk.

andrew on Apr 21st, 2008 at 6:11 AM:

@ Sean Michael

this is hard storage, like a flash drive, not a spinning disk like in your current hard drive, there are no "seek" speeds, there is just indexing, and with a harddrive that size you can index to your hearts content and not worry about running out of space(which is the current limitation with indexing on current flash drives). OH, and as a side note, I hope this meets with your strict grammar requirements.

Ant on Apr 21st, 2008 at 6:12 AM:

Will people please calm down! This is *nano-technology*, highly experimental and a long way from being available in high-street stores!

Anonymous on Apr 21st, 2008 at 9:46 AM:

First of all, a 500-terabyte MP3 player is stupid. With all that space, go lossless.
Secondly, where are you going to get the money to fill that thing with songs?

It's just not practical. Don't expect to see a 500,000 GB music player anytime soon.

Randall Gordon on Apr 21st, 2008 at 9:49 AM:

"You all do realize that this will never hit consumer use at all."

Right...and 15 years ago no one could imagine a use for anything beyond 10GB...

I'm already maxing out multiple terabytes of storage with RAW files from my Canon cameras and they're only 8MP. Where are we going to put hours and hours of 3K+ resolution video from next gen camcorders like Red's new Scarlet? 500TB+ would be a godsend...

Razor512 on Apr 22nd, 2008 at 8:11 AM:

Who cares about a mp3 player that holds that much, unless your an uber pirate you will never afford enough content to fill it.

even todays ipods you cant afford enough content to fill them

NightKev on Apr 22nd, 2008 at 8:11 PM:

Guys, you seem to be stuck on the whole MP3 usage thing. Just because the article writer for some reason mentioned MP3 players, doesn't mean that's the ONLY thing it can be used for.

ultraelectromagnetic on Apr 23rd, 2008 at 1:18 AM:

interesting.
can't they come up with a technology that can record every thing that has happened in your life the whole of your lifetime? i wonder how large the file size would be (depends on reached age), coz i'm thinking that's one thing one can put in that kind of storage.
well, anyway, you have these kind of technologies and humanity surely is quickly approaching godhead ala daneel olivaw in the foundation series of i. asimov

hmmm..

Jelle De Loecker on Apr 27th, 2008 at 9:21 AM:

I agree.
Let's forget about the mp3-bit, they only put it there so people could understand how much space it actually is, it can be of so much better use!

I would love to have so much space for my video-editing. Forget about HDV, AVCHD (and the entire x.264 stuff) let's go totally lossless!

surfed on Apr 30th, 2008 at 9:09 PM:

That means we have to design a new file-system. ext5 anybody?

casper911ca on May 1st, 2008 at 3:58 PM:

Why?
I dont think I even have enough Videos to fill something like that! I only have about 12G of music.

What are you going to store on it? The human genome plus a few other things... like the whole internet, haha.

DarkMasterHalo on May 2nd, 2008 at 10:04 AM:

We don't need Ext5 yet because Ext4 is supporting 1 Exibyte of volume and file size. Just inform before asking for a new technology that already exist :P. Soon I'll get Fedora 9 on Mai 13, which is with Ext4 support.

DarkMasterHalo on May 2nd, 2008 at 10:08 AM:

Oh and for information, 1 Exibyte = 1024 Petabytes, which 1 Petatype = 1024 Terabytes, so we don't need Ext5 yet. I don't think we will see 1 Exibyte Hard drive soon with the type of hard drive we have now. We will see the 1 Exibyte technology with holographic hard drive. Just check it. I don't trust this technology as if there is a power surge, it destroy any data on it. This is not the case of Sata/IDE hard drive. Corportation will always prefer Real Hard drive as they can retrieve information of a highly damaged HDD.

Take care !

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