A Boy and His Atom

More on extreme miniaturization in computing.

What you see in the video below are atoms. IBM researchers created this stop-motion film by directly interacting with carbon monoxide molecules and moving their atoms on a copper surface.

As you might imagine, the goal of this research is not artistic. The point is that if it is possible to force atoms to assume a certain configuration and maintain it, then those atoms can be used to store information, and this means memories that are a huge order of magnitude smaller than current ones.

To give an idea of the impact of such a technology, Andreas Heinrich, project coordinator, states that "If you have a couple of movies on your smartphone today, in the future you could fit all the existing ones there are." Which opens the door to scenarios thare interesting and disturbing on the same time.

In quest’altro video, the making of A Boy and His Atom.

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