For some reason, you don’t normally hear or see news about the technology sector or industry advancements in Canada. However, an Alberta-based Ph.D. student has something that is truly newsworthy.
Originally shared by GlobalNews, Roshan Achal has developed a new storage memory that could exceed the capabilities of current hard drives by one-thousand times. Thanks to nanotechnology, Achal, and his colleagues are hoping to be able to stuff in roughly 138 terabytes per square inch. That’s about the size of a postage stamp. When you think about it, that is a massive amount of storage for an area about the size of a postage stamp. The average hard drive these days is in the 4 TB range with the largest one available on the market at 14 TB (by Seagate).
Scientists perfect technique to boost capacity of computer storage a thousandfold. PhD student, Roshan Achal led the discovery along with Dr. Robert Wolkow who we’ve funded for several years through our chair and entrepreneurial programs: https://t.co/LG966Gu98I #nanotechnology pic.twitter.com/g5H1u0RkZN
— Alberta Innovates (@ABInnovates) July 24, 2018
This is actually a rather remarkable development and hopefully, there will be a day where it will be made available for use in public, and available for consumer use.
There has been a lot of feedback concerning this new storage memory advancement. Some positives have come from the technology sector. There has also been a fair deal of negative feedback.
“Not feasible, Patented, and Buried Both”
OR
“Read this when I woke up, interesting. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see it come to fruition for a long time, mostly because if your leapfrog that much ahead, where’s the profit? Just another reason the world would be so much better off if we dropped the whole capitalist society. Profit, profit, profit.”
So, profit.
Yes, this person’s comment is partially valid. Well, the part about the profit, anyway. I’m not so sure about the notion of dropping the whole capitalist society part.
While this is without a doubt a massive leap in technology, the chances that this is going to be available for use by people like you and me is well, want to take a wild guess? Probably not likely anytime soon.
I say that simply because it took a great many years to travel from 14KB to 14 TB. I’m also talking about public based storage media devices. While military and government have access to many different types and levels of technology, we are not anywhere close to being in either of those categories and therefore, we won’t have the access they do.
Another point to keep in mind is that this is a huge leap that is not profitable to any corporation at this point. That’s because the availability of this technology is probably not going to be public… or at least the likelihood of it being released for public use is slim to none in my mind.
Sure, it would be great to see this nano based technology used in tandem with such things as biotechnology in robotics as an example. Imagine how it could be used in human implanting as well. There are applications where this new technological development could provide life-altering results. The only problem is that we’ll all grow old waiting for it to take its place in the ongoing timeline of technological advancements.
I’m particularly proud of the fact that although the project will probably never reach my hands, it was developed in Canada by Canadians.
Image Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05171-y/figures/4
It also reminds me that we live in a great period in time. I say that because as little as 20 years ago, we had not even thought that such technology was possible. Now we are seeing things eclipse as the world of technology continues to keep spinning into the future.
What will the future hold for the young scientists in Alberta?
I suspect this is not the last we will hear about them. With this kind of attention and the pressure to keep advancing the storage capabilities of the average hard drive, I think Canada may somehow end up as the birthplace of something truly significant.
Even if I may logically see that there is no chance that this new storage development is going to fill the consumer marketplace anytime soon, it doesn’t mean that that door has been completely shut. Regardless of what happens, I am still proud to be Canadian and proud of the fact that Canadians continue to make history in my lifetime.