The World’s Smallest Magnetic Data Storage Unit Is Made Of Just 12 Atoms, Squeezing An Entire
Byte Into Just 96 Atoms, A Significant Shrinkage In The World Of Information
Storage. It’s Not A Quantum Computer, But It’s A Computer Storage Unit At The
Quantum Scale. By Contrast, Modern Hard Disk Drives Use About A Million Atoms
To Store A Single Bit, And A Half Billion Atoms Per Byte. Until Now, It Was
Unclear How Many (Or How Few) Atoms Would Be Needed To Build A Reliable,
Lasting Memory Bit, The Basic Piece Of Information That A Computer Understands.
Researchers At IBM And The German
Center For Free-Electron Laser Science Decided To Start From The Ground Up,
Building A Magnetic Memory Bit Atom-By-Atom. They Used A Scanning Tunneling
Microscope To Create Regular Patterns Of Iron Atoms Aligned In Rows Of Six
Each. They Found Two Rows Was Enough To Securely Store One Bit, And Eight Pairs
Of Rows Was Enough To Store A Byte
