Crystals and Computers?

[JTM³]

I thought I heard once that crystals might be used for memory storage and such?

 

They use crystals on Stargate and such, but aside from New Age junk, are there any qualities of crystals that could make them good for computing? Like crystal motherboards or memory, or crystaline chips?

 

 

Thanks, LC

[Klaynos]

Well all the semiconductors inside the computer are crystal structures...

[JTM³]

Oh, true, but I meant more like the "big" crystals on Stargate and such.

 

Like the crystals in the DHD and such.

 

Is there any scientific truth to that?

[JTM³]

Anyone else?

[cpwmatthews]

I think that we will see light as an instruction source or pathway for binary instructions become part of the computer interface, as for storage, no because the chrystal does not on it's own possess the power to store, thats my thought anyway,

[YT2095]

there are special resins that form what would apear to be a crystal, that will alter upon laser exposure of intersecting beams and leave a permanent impression, a bit like a hologram in Real 3D, it`s possible these could be used as a storage device at a guess.

[cpwmatthews]

I'd Be interested to hear more about the resin and it's properties,Can the be altered or they permanent once used?

[YT2095]

here`s one even better: http://www.bathsheba.com/crystal/process/

 

I think you`ll like this

[timo]

I thought I heard once that crystals might be used for memory storage and such?

I remember that some 5+ years ago some physicists from the applied optics group in Darmstadt showed us around in their lab. They were storing data in some special crystals via interference patterns of lasers (the crystals had the special property to make irreversible structural changes when a sufficiently high electric field was applied). They already could store data in them and told us they will soon be used in industrial applications .... . Well, that was 5+ years ago and I never heard of that technology again. But half a year ago I talked with some solid state physicists who does some magnetic stuff for HDs about that technique and he told me that it´s pretty dead as modern HDs almost get the same capacity they aimed at with their crystals. I cannot judge if he´s correct but he´s likely to be up to date so I guess the idea of storing data in crystals on computers is pretty much cancelled.

[Guest_Jim*]

There's a company out there that uses laser to put holograms on a medium to store data, which sounds similar to what that resin is used for but it isn't just the top layers of the medium being used. Here is a link to that company's website.

http://www.inphase-technologies.com/index.html

[YT2095]

the one I was initialy thinking of with the resin post was the 3D sort, for wants of better explaination it`s a 3D printer, closer to addative synthesis rather than subtractive (it add the parts it wants rather than takes away the bits it doesn`t) to leave a 3D item behind in the shape required.

the Glass fracture method seems quite Viable though, IF there were a means of "reading" the data off it afterwards.

although I`m sure there probably would be, even with todays technology.

[Luciola]

I think Atheist was right about crystals as memory being out of date, I haven't heard much of it in the past few years but I did read a few articles about it about four or five years ago.

 

Now that we've been able to quantum teleport atoms and photons we'll be seeying more research going into quantum computers where the availability for storage will be greatly improved over current binary systems, not to mention the amount of computing power that quantum computers should be capable of. Although we're in great need of actually making a working quantum repeater for quantum computing technology to really be worth it.

[bascule]

Diamond makes a great substrate