Two hundred years ago, punching holes in cards was the hot new way to store data— in the weaving patterns of Joseph Jacquard’s automated loom. Now a new take on the idea has led to postage-stamp-sized chips that can store a terabit (1000 gigabits) of data, or the equivalent of 200 CDs. The system, known as Millipede, has been under development by researchers at IBM in Zurich, Switzerland, since the late 1990s (New Scientist, 27 March 1999, p 46). It uses miniature spikes that record data bits by making tiny holes in a plastic film coated onto a slice…
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