Scientists Peg Data’s Speed Limit

April 22, 2004 | Source: AP

Scientists say they’ve discovered an apparent speed limit on the scale of picoseconds (10^-12 seconds) — about 1,000 times faster than today’s state-of-the-art (gigabits per second) data-storage devices — that will restrict how quickly data can be written onto disks and then retrieved.

I Tudosa et al, “The ultimate speed of magnetic switching in granular recording media,” Nature Vol 428 No 6985 pp783-876, April 22, 2004