Are you one of those crazy fun-loving guys or gals like the Gorilla, who just loves his iPod or MP3 player? Or how about your cellular phone? Many people feel lost without it. Sure many of us are and these days, you’d be crazy not to be! The technology has literally changed the scope of society’s capabilities when it comes to listening and storing music and information. Currently, the very best storage device is the iPod 160 GB Classic, which can store over 40,000 songs in it’s memory; that’s 32 times as much as the iPods that first debuted more than 6 years ago in 2001. So, if that much progress has been made in only six year’s time in memory capabilities, just think of what the near-future can give us.
Well, it looks like it’s already in the works as we speak. Mobile phones, iPods, and MP3 players may soon be able to store more than 100 times the information thanks to the new so-called “racetrack” memory that uses the “spin” of an electron to store data and can operate far more quickly than regular hard drives. Scientists at IBM say they have demonstrated a new type of digital storage that will actually allow a device such as an MP3 player to store nearly 500,000 songs! Yes, folks a half-million songs! (Cool, but quite honestly, the Gorilla can hardly listen to 500 or 1000 songs!) It may also be able to store about 3500 movies as well, and believe it or not, it costs far less to produce!
The team of researchers also claim that the new technology will require much less power and will be capable of running on a single battery charge for “weeks at a time” and will last for decades. The new “racetrack” memory is similar to flash technology (currently the most advanced type of memory for small devices) in that it has no moving parts, thus reducing the problems associated with mechanical reliability. However unlike flash, it can write data very quickly and doesn’t wear out like some flash memory drives. ”The promise of racetrack memory — for example, the ability to carry massive amounts of information in your pocket — could unleash creativity leading to devices and applications that nobody has imagined yet,” Stuart Parkin, the IBM researcher who led the research, said. Although the research is still in the exploratory stages, IBM says that it expects the devices to be on the market in a mere 10 years. Fascinating technology!