Quantum Entanglement, Diamonds, and New Information Storage Tech

"Diamond Could Store Quantum Information"
Devin Powell, Science News, via Tech News, Discovery News (March 28, 2011)

"THE GIST
" * By manipulating atoms inside diamonds, scientists have developed a new way to store information.
" * The technique could lead to quantum computers capable of solving problems beyond the reach of today's technology.

"Could be that diamonds are a geek's best friend.

"Scientists have developed a new way to manipulate atoms inside diamond crystals so that they store information long enough to function as quantum memory, which encodes information not as the 0s and 1s crunched by conventional computers but in states that are both 0 and 1 at the same time. Physicists use such quantum data to send information securely, and hope to eventually build quantum computers capable of solving problems beyond the reach of today's technology.

"For those developing this quantum memory, the perfect diamonds don't come from Tiffany & Co. -- or Harry Winston, for that matter. Impurities are the key to the technology.

" 'Oddly enough, perfection may not be the way to go,' said David Awschalom of the University of California, Santa Barbara. 'We want to build in defects.'...

The article implies that the defects - anomalies in the diamond crystal's lattice - would probably involve nitrogen, a frequently-found impurity in diamonds.

The non-carbon atoms are important because - "...Several years ago, scientists learned how to change the spin of such electrons using microwave energy and put them to work as quantum bits, or qubits...."

The new technique links the spin of an electron to a nitrogen atom's nucleus. The transfer involves magnetic fields, and it's fast: "...about 100 nanoseconds, comparable to how long it takes to store information on a stick of RAM."

Back to the article, again: "...The technique has 'a fidelity of 85 to 95 percent,' Awschalom said March 22 in Dallas at a meeting for the American Physical Society.

"In contrast to some other quantum systems under development, which require temperatures close to absolute zero, this diamond memory works at room temperature. The spins inside the diamond can be both changed and measured by shining laser light into the diamond. This could make diamond an attractive material for scientists developing nanophotonic systems designed to move and store information in packets of light.

"Unlike a diamond itself, this quantum memory isn't forever. But it lasts for a very long time by quantum standards. The nuclear spin remains coherent for more than a millisecond, with the potential to improve to seconds....

"...Sebastian Loth, a physicist at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. [said], 'If you have a lifetime of milliseconds, that lets you do millions of operations.'

"In addition to stability, diamond may also overcome another hurdle that has faced quantum computing -- it can be scaled up to larger sizes. In a paper published last year in Nano Letters, Awschalom developed a technique for creating customizable patterns of nitrogen atoms inside a diamond, using lasers to implant thousands of atoms in a grid...."

A thousand atoms in a grid is impressive: but the scaling doesn't, apparently, stop there. Transmitting quantum information is possible, by connecting/entangling qubits. Problem is, entanglement seems to work up to a distance of kilometers: which is huge on the atomic scale, but pretty much useless for a network that extends much beyond one city.

That may not be such a serious limitation, though. The article ends with this: "...Quantum repeaters could potentially use small chips of diamond to catch, store and retransmit this information to extend the range, enabling quantum networks to work over much longer distances."

The principle sounds pretty much like the way we transmit radio and television signals today - and that's almost another topic.

For an article with phrases like "fidelity of 85 to 95 percent" that says why some folks are interested in which way electrons spin - it's pretty interesting. In the Lemming's opinion. Your experience may vary.

The Still Sell Vacuum Tubes

The Lemming checked: and sure enough, some outfits are still selling vacuum tubes.

That's not very surprising. Old technologies are sometimes useful for particular situations - or someone may just like doing things the old-fashioned way. One of the Lemming's extended family was a flint knapper - and that's another topic.

It's been an exciting half-century. The Lemming remembers when it was obvious that computers would be huge things, occupying entire buildings and consuming vast amounts of power.

Then the transistor stopped being a laboratory curiosity, and started being part of little boxes attached to the ears of adolescents.

This hasn't, the Lemming suspects, been a particularly comfortable era for folks who'd just as soon that their great-grandfather's way of life be indistinguishable from their own - and for whom "innovation" is the reckless practice of trying a new sort of food. Or wearing a shirt of a different color.

And the Lemming's getting off-topic again.


Somewhat-related posts:

• "Good News, Neural Devices Connect Brain, Computers: Bad News, Same Thing"
  (July 11, 2009)
• "Nanotechnolgy and Electronics: Atom-Sized Transistors ('Nanotronics'??)"
  (February 20, 2009)
• "Programmable Metallization Cell (PMC): One Terabyte of Data in a Little Package"
  (June 20, 2008)
• "More About the Marvelous Memristor"
  (May 1, 2008)
• "Oral Tradition; Writing; Movable Type; Internet - Exciting Times!"
  (July 31, 2007)

Books are Doomed? Probably Not - But Kindle is Hot

"Amazon sales pop as Kindle books overtake paperbacks"
Julianne Pepitone, CNNMoney.com (January 27, 2011)

"OK, bookworms, now you can declare Armageddon: Kindle e-books have overtaken paperback books as the bestselling type of content in Amazon's bookstore.

"Amazon made waves when it announced in July that Kindle content was outselling hardcover books. But industry analysts quickly dismissed that milestone, pointing out that paperback books sell far more copies than pricier hardcovers.

"E-books have now vanquished their paperback rivals as well.

" 'This milestone has come even sooner than we expected -- and it's on top of continued growth in paperback sales,' Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a prepared statement.

"In fact, for every 100 paperback books sold, Amazon has sold 115 Kindle books since the beginning of the year, the company said...."

The Lemming hasn't bought a Kindle or other e-book: yet. There's something to be said for the codex as a data storage and retrieval technology. But the Lemming doesn't think it's an either-or situation. There's plenty of room for online research and reading, ink-on-thin-sheets data storage units, and e-books. (July 2, 2010)

In the Lemming's opinion.

On the other hand, what's happening at Amazon probably isn't the best news that old-school publishers have seen recently.

On the other hand - the Lemming's written about technology and getting a grip before:

• "Technophobic Movies: A Top (Bottom?) Ten List"
  (January 27, 2011)

Programmable Metallization Cell (PMC): One Terabyte of Data in a Little Package

"How to fit 1TB of data on one tiny thumbdrive"
techradar.com (October 29th 2007)

"New memory better, cheaper and more efficient than flash

" Scientists at Arizona State University have created a new kind of solid state memory that they say is much cheaper and more efficient than flash. And crucially, because it uses a new kind of nanotechnology, storage capacities will be much higher than anything we have today, for a tenth of the cost.

"The new memory is called programmable metallization cell (PMC) and one terabyte (1TB) USB thumbdrives are said to be just a few years away. The largest commercially available flash drives today are only 32GB in size - 30 times smaller and very pricey...."

Very pricey now. I suspect that I may live long enough to see these things put in cereal boxes.

More About the Marvelous Memristor

"Electronics' 'missing link' found"
BBC (May 1, 2008)

"Details of an entirely new kind of electronic device, which could make chips smaller and far more efficient, have been outlined by scientists.

"The new components, described by scientists at Hewlett-Packard, are known as "memristors"."

The BBC article includes a 1:06 video. And, a little more detail about the memristor:

"The memristors are so called because they have the ability to "remember" the amount of charge that has flowed through them after the power has been switched off."

"Professor Williams and his team have already shown that by putting two memristors together - a configuration called a crossbar latch - it could do the job of a transistor.

"'A crossbar latch has the type of functionality you want from a transistor but it's working with very different physics," he explained.

"Intriguingly, these devices can also be made much smaller than a conventional transistor."

I think that we're looking for an interesting period in technology. The memristor is new technology, and "we've never done that before" should start any time now. Maybe it already has:

" 'Even to consider an alternative to the transistor is anathema to many device engineers, and the memristor concept will have a steep slope to climb towards acceptance,' wrote Drs James Tour and Tao Heare of Rice University, Houston, in an accompanying article in Nature."

In a way, it reminds me of Mr. Fulton's Folly: the Clermont" (not the first steamboat: the first commercially successful steamboat). New technologies take time to get accepted.

Previous post on memristors: "Memristor: Cool New Technology from HP Labs" (April 30, 2008)

Memristor: Cool New Technology from HP Labs

• "Demystifying the memristor: Proof of fourth basic circuit element could transform computing"
  HP Labs (April, 2008)
  "Researchers at HP Labs have solved a decades-old mystery by proving the existence of a fourth basic element in integrated circuits that could make it possible to develop computers that turn on and off like an electric light.
  "The memristor — short for memory resistor - could make it possible to develop far more energy-efficient computing systems with memories that retain information even after the power is off, so there's no wait for the system to boot up after turning the computer on. It may even be possible to create systems with some of the pattern-matching abilities of the human brain."
• "Scientists develop new type of memory circuit"
  Reuters (April 30, 2008)
  "It took about 40 years to find it, but scientists at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday they discovered a fourth basic type of electrical circuit that could lead to a computer you never have to boot up.
  "The finding proves what until now had only been theory -- but could save millions from the tedium of waiting for a computer to find its 'place,' the researchers said.
  "Basic electronics theory teaches that there are three fundamental elements of a passive circuit -- resistors, capacitors and inductors.
  "But in the 1970s, Leon Chua of the University of California at Berkeley, theorized there should be a fourth called a memory resistor, or memristor, for short, and he worked out the mathematical equations to prove it."
• "HP Researchers Build Intelligent Memory"
  PC World (April 30, 2008)
  "Researchers at Hewlett-Packard have developed a working unit of a memory circuit that has existed in theory for 37 years, which could ultimately replace RAM and make computers more intelligent by tracking data it has retained.
  "The technology, called memristor, could allow computers to make decisions by understanding past patterns of data it has collected, similar to human brains collecting and understanding a series of events."
• "HP Engineers Claim Memristor Breakthrough"
  eWeek.com (April 30, 2008)
  "HP Labs engineers claim they have discovered a long-sought circuit element that could lead to new ways of creating memory.
  "HP Labs engineers are claiming a breakthrough in the field of electrical engineering that could lead to an entirely new class of chip memory that might one day replace traditional DRAM technology."

The Memristor, a sort of circuit element that apparently 'remembers' its state without power, was unveiled at HP Labs.

From what I read, the memristor was described in mathematical terms about thirty years ago. Now, it's an emerging technology. I'm sure that it will make for faster, more efficient, and easier-to-use computers.

One bit of speculation that kept showing up, I'm a little skeptical about: "The technology ... could allow computers to make decisions by understanding past patterns of data it has collected, similar to human brains collecting and understanding a series of events."

It seems to me that, although the memristor should revolutionize computer design, and end that seemingly-interminable wait while your computer boots, there isn't really a link between the memristor's properties and allowing "computers to make decisions by understanding past patterns of data it has collected..."

As far as I can tell, the memristor is a revolutionary advance in digital memory technology. But, it's still a memory technology. We've had computers that can "remember" "past patterns of data" for decades. The memristor should speed up data storage and retrieval cycles enormously, and have other benefits - but the descriptions I read didn't seem to indicate that sort of C3P0-ish potential.

Maybe I missed something.

---

Update May 1, 2008.

I missed something. Specifically, I missed a Wired article that explains why the memristor is so revolutionary, when it comes to emulating brain functions.

The articles I cited made the assertion that memristors would "allow computers to make decisions by understanding past patterns" but didn't (my opinion) adequately back up the claim. After following developments, real and imagined, in AI for the last forty years or so, I'm sorry to say that it sounded like marketing hype.

Thank you, Anonymous, for pointing the Wired article out. The key point is that memristors can be made to simulate the analog functions of our brains. The things can be, functionally, much more similar to our neural circuits than a digital computer.

"Scientists Create First Memristor: Missing Fourth Electronic Circuit Element"
Wired (April 30, 2008)

"Indeed, Leon himself noted the similarity between his own predictions of the properties for a memristor and what was then known about synapses in the brain. One of his suggestions was that you could perhaps do some type of neuronal computing using memristors. HP Labs thinks that's actually a very good idea.

" 'Building an analog computer in which you don't use 1s and 0s and instead use essentially all shades of gray in between is one of the things we're already working on,' says Williams. These computers could do the types of things that digital computers aren't very good at –- like making decisions, determining that one thing is larger than another, or even learning.

"While a lot of researchers are currently trying to write a computer code that simulates brain function on a standard machine, they have to use a huge machines with enormous processing power to simulate only tiny portions of the brain.

"Williams and his team say they can now take a different approach: 'Instead of writing a computer program to simulate a brain or simulate some brain function, we're actually looking to build some hardware based upon memristors that emulates brain-like functions,' says Williams." [emphasis mine]

Digital Domino Flash Drives: No Kidding

" Domino-Shaped Flash Drive Indicates Used Space"

This is clever: Each half of a 'domino' is a flash drive that can be plugged into another of this design. "They have dots on them, that each represent a giga of space loaded on the drive."

A Brazilian company makes them: for their sake, I hope they get their global marketing set up for next Christmas season. I think they've got a winner here, in the digital novelties division.

Oops! More Personal Data Missing

"Data Lost on 650,000 Credit Card Holders"

Good news: This seems be a matter of human error, not theft.

More good news: The data storage company involved let their clients know about the missing data.

Bad news: It seems to be too easy to accidentally lose personal data.

The Identity Theft Resource Center" is one organization that's popped up to deal with this issue.

"To err is human, but to really foul things up takes a computer."

"We Came In Peace For All Mankind" - And Left Messages

"The Untold Story: How One Small Disc Carried One Giant Message for Mankind" tells about a silicone disk (about 1 1/2 inches across, or roughly 4 centimeters, or roughly the size of an American dollar coin), left by the Apollo 11 crew at Tranquility Base, and now nearly forgotten.

There's more detail at collectgSPACE.com.

For me, the disk itself isn't particularly interesting, apart from the technology and art involved in making it: it's the messages on the disk.

Oral Tradition; Writing; Movable Type; Internet - Exciting Times!

You've heard comparisons between recent developments in data processing, particularly the Internet, and use of movable type, a few centuries back.

I think we're looking at something more on the scale of the development of writing, a couple millennia or so before that.

Our ability to search, sort, and manipulate information today is unlike anything humanity has experienced before.

For a very long time, information storage and retrieval was limited to what people could remember, and re-tell. Stories told around a fire at night were a way to transmit ideas, stories, and values from person to person, and from one generation to another.

The first big breakthrough in information technology was writing, several thousand years ago. For the first time, people were able to store information externally, instead of relying entirely on what could be memorized and held within the human brain.

Movable type was the next important development. Printing presses with movable type made it possible to mass-produce written documents much more rapidly, efficiently, and accurately than was possible with hand-lettered documents.

The result was still a written document: produced in unprecedented quantity, and available at very low cost. Book ownership was no longer limited to the extremely wealthy and large institutions. Fast, relatively inexpensive distribution of information became possible.

Written documents are an excellent information storage medium, but one with very limited search functions, and no ability to sort of otherwise manipulate the stored information.

When I was young, externally-stored information was almost entirely static. We relied on our ability to read books, magazines, and other written documents for almost all access to the recorded store of humanity's knowledge and wisdom. Sound and video recordings not static in one sense, but it was more difficult to search for information in them, than in a book with an index.

Today, an increasing amount of information is in a dynamic medium: one in which information can be searched and manipulated in a way that would have been literally science fiction in my youth.

The change from storing information in a static medium to storing it in a dynamic one is a radical change.

Writing made it possible for us to store information outside our heads: indefinitely. That made it possible for ideas to be

• Recorded in extreme detail
• Transmitted across generations without depending on the vagaries of human memory
• Brought together from vast distances in time and space - in effect bringing together minds separated by thousands of miles, and years

It's not as much fun, in a way, as swapping stories around a fire, but writing made it possible for us to enjoy the tales of Homer thousands of years after the Greek storyteller died.

The transition from handwritten documents to documents created by movable type was very significant, but didn't change the basic nature of writing. We still used permanent marks on a relatively flat surface to record and transmit information.

Now, in addition to the information storage and transmission power of written language, we have the ability to take stored information and rapidly perform tasks that are time-consuming, at best, with written documents:

• Search
• Compare
• Sort
• Count
• Modify

We have something new here.

And exciting.