Historical question, what went wrong with bubble memory?
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From: Derek Simmons on 18 Oct 2006 12:07 kenney(a)cix.compulink.co.uk wrote: > I can remember several years when magnetic bubble memory was > going to be the next big thing, replacing most other forms of > storage. It then seemed to disappear without trace. Has > development stopped? > > Ken Young If I remember right it was very slow, very expensive, not completely reliable and I think IBM held most if not all the patents. Being slow might have been related to reliably reading and writing to the device.
From: Del Cecchi on 18 Oct 2006 12:14 kenney(a)cix.compulink.co.uk wrote: > I can remember several years when magnetic bubble memory was > going to be the next big thing, replacing most other forms of > storage. It then seemed to disappear without trace. Has > development stopped? > > Ken Young yes, years ago. -- Del Cecchi "This post is my own and doesn?t necessarily represent IBM?s positions, strategies or opinions.?
From: Eric P. on 18 Oct 2006 12:51 Derek Simmons wrote: > > kenney(a)cix.compulink.co.uk wrote: > > I can remember several years when magnetic bubble memory was > > going to be the next big thing, replacing most other forms of > > storage. It then seemed to disappear without trace. Has > > development stopped? > > > > Ken Young > > If I remember right it was very slow, very expensive, not completely > reliable and I think IBM held most if not all the patents. Being slow > might have been related to reliably reading and writing to the device. Intel sold a line of these, back in 1977'ish time frame. I remember because I was pondering the idea of using them to build storage pack for a digital camera back then. But they were a bit too expensive, power hungry, and not quite dense enough (only 1 Mb), and without all the other infrastructure we have today (PCs and printers everywhere) it had too limited a market. I vaguely recall them being radiation hard and suitable for space, but don't recall if that was suggested use in a marketing blurb or a writeup on a real usage. I gather CMOS ram eventually pushed it out of the market. Searching on 'intel "bubble memory"' seems to return lots-o-poop. Eric
From: Tim McCaffrey on 18 Oct 2006 15:04 In article <45365d7e$0$1350$834e42db(a)reader.greatnowhere.com>, eric_pattison(a)sympaticoREMOVE.ca says... > >Derek Simmons wrote: >> >> kenney(a)cix.compulink.co.uk wrote: >> > I can remember several years when magnetic bubble memory was >> > going to be the next big thing, replacing most other forms of >> > storage. It then seemed to disappear without trace. Has >> > development stopped? >> > >> > Ken Young >> >> If I remember right it was very slow, very expensive, not completely >> reliable and I think IBM held most if not all the patents. Being slow >> might have been related to reliably reading and writing to the device. > >Intel sold a line of these, back in 1977'ish time frame. >I remember because I was pondering the idea of using them to build >storage pack for a digital camera back then. But they were a bit too >expensive, power hungry, and not quite dense enough (only 1 Mb), >and without all the other infrastructure we have today (PCs and >printers everywhere) it had too limited a market. > >I vaguely recall them being radiation hard and suitable for space, >but don't recall if that was suggested use in a marketing blurb >or a writeup on a real usage. > >I gather CMOS ram eventually pushed it out of the market. > >Searching on 'intel "bubble memory"' seems to return lots-o-poop. I use to have a databook on these, probably threw it out... Anyway, one problem I recall with BM was that the bubbles were arranged on rings, there was one primary ring hooked to multiple secondary rings. A bubble was rotated from a secondary ring to the primary ring, and then moved under the read "head" (this is all from memory...), which did a destructive read, and wrote it back. You had to be careful to rotate the rings to a known position before power off, so the memory was non-volatile, but you could scramble it easily enough. - Tim
From: JJ on 18 Oct 2006 17:20
kenney(a)cix.compulink.co.uk wrote: > I can remember several years when magnetic bubble memory was > going to be the next big thing, replacing most other forms of > storage. It then seemed to disappear without trace. Has > development stopped? > > Ken Young I also recall the jumps in sizes didn't increase very fast when the 1M arrived and that DRAMs were starting to follow Moores law and could be predicted out to follow scaling laws. Also they needed heaters to work properly and permanent magnets to actually sustain the bubbles. Anyway the wiki bubble memory article brings back neural memories. John Jakson |