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" have developed a memory technology that achieves the ultimate physical limit by using individual atoms to represent a single bit of data "
I don't know why it's always assumed in these articles that 1 bit per atom is the ultimate physical storage limit. There was that Stanford University work which showed information encoded at 35 bits per electron.
tty2, I feel the near future is three to ten years. I feel this is entirely possible for read only memory by a couple methods out there that offer tremendous density. AMAT has equipment that works down to 1nm for inspection which is one step in the right direction.
Moon, C. R., Mattos, L. S., Foster, B. K., Zeltzer, G. & Manoharan, H. C. Nature Nanotech. Advanced online publication doi:10.1038/nnano.2008.415 (2009).
This work is miles out from any sort of product obviously. But claiming that the ultimate limit of memory is 1 bit per atom shows a lack of imagination!
The tip of an STM has been used to move atoms around at very low temperatures for years, but this is a step up in that it has been scaled up to 1 kB, so excellent work.
But, I'd say this work from TU Delft is also absolutely years from a product.
The real test of retention is whether it will hold at high temperatures (like in an auto). I feel single atoms on a surface could be vulnerable there, should be tested.
