Magnetic Data Storage A computer hard drive stores your data magnetically Disk NS direction of disk motion Write Head __ Bits of information NS Read Head Signal
Scaling Down to the Nanoscale Increases the amount of data stored on a fixed amount of real estate ! Now ~ 50 billion bits/in 2, future target more than 1 trillion bits/in 2 25 DVDs on a disk the size of a quarter, or all Library of Congress books on a 1 sq ft tile!
Binary Representation of Data one bit1 or 0 only 2 choices two bits00, 01, 10, 11 4 choices three bits 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, choices n bits has 2 n choices For example, 5 bits has 5 2 = 32 choices... more than enough to represent all the letters of the alphabet
Binary representation of lower case letters 5-bit Science Saturday code: ex: k = 01011