[flashingleds]

This is because it just got published in Nature something, the earlier open arXiv version from April is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.02265 Figure 3 is absolutely spectacular, and deserves to be admired by the whole world. A comment on the inevitable promises of revolutionized data storage: Yes the areal density is fantastically high (>500Tbit / square inch as opposed to 1Tbit/in^2 in bleeding edge HDDs / NAND flash, if I crunched the numbers correctly). But it requires ultrahigh vacuum, preparation of a clean copper crystal, dosing with copper chloride and then writing/reading with a scanning tunneling microscope, maintaining liquid nitrogen temperature. Also a modern SSD will write about 500MB in a second, while this method would write 500MB in 240 years. I don't mean to slag it off; we should all appreciate it for being an absolutely wonderful and awe inspiring technical feat. Just don't get carried away dreaming of the applications in your laptop/server/phone.

[Dylan16807]

Pretty cool, but keep in mind that it's at a massive scalability disadvantage compared to flash because of the requirement for a read/write head. Current 3D flash may only be 1.7Tbpsi, but that's with a layer 4 microns thick. Make it a millimeter thick and you're in the same areal density range.

[UnquietTinkerer]

Practicality aside, that was a fascinating and very well-written paper. Thank you for posting it.