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PROJECT ON MILLIPEDE TECHNOLOGY/2014

Introduction
Imagine, all the data in your hard disk, your DVD collection and all those several Gbs of data, in a single small device may be as small as the thumb drives of present day. That is what the Millipede memory technology proposes to achieve. Developed by the IBM, this technology is one of the latest innovations in the field of memory and storage technology. The Millipede memory technology was introduced by the IBM in early 2003. But, the whole concept came into limelight only in late 2005 when the IBM showcased a prototype of the technology in the CeBIT 2005 and proposed to achieve an average areal density of 1 Tbit/in2 . This meant that 1 trillion bits could be stored in a square inch or almost 200 Gbs of storage in a stamp-sized chip. Recently now, the IBM has also promised a maximum areal density of 2.7 Tbit/in2 . The most widely used secondary storage or the hard disk technology of the present day is the magnetic storage. Also we have the flash memory or the solid state devices in the field of storage and memory technology. The current secondary storage technology of the magnetic hard disk is approaching its limits. With the hard disk capabilities doubling every year, the magnetic storage would soon find its super- paramagnetic limit of areal storage density. That is, the limit of confining the local magnetisation would be reached soon due to the superparamagnetic effect.Also, the flash drives are not excepted to achieve the proposed storage density in the immediate future. Due to these reasons, the Millipede memory is considered as the technology for the future. That means, the

Millipede memory is the proposed technological replacement for the current secondary technologies once they find their limits.

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The Millipede data storage device was developed by IBM and first demonstrated as a prototype at the 2005 CeBIT computer expo in Germany. The project was a natural evolution from the creation of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), developed at IBM Zurich in 1981 by Gerd Binning and Heinrich Rohrer, who earned the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for this invention (Chang). The STM was able to create nanoscale images by bringing a very sharp conducting probe tip near a surface, applying a voltage between the two, and measuring the current that results (the phenomenon of electronic transfer in this case is called tunneling). This measured current is a function of the density of the surface and the gap between the surface and the tip, which can be processed into an image of the surface as the tip is passed back and forth along it.Binning and Rohrer soon realized that the highly sensitive and precise silicon tips that this form of microscopy required could also be used to contact a surface, and make marks in some cases. In fact, the STM's direct descendent the atomic force microscope (AFM) can be used to modify materials and even machine thin films. The AFM differs from the STM mainly in that the tip is attached to a cantilever and

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contacts the surface, and a beam of electrons are reflected off of the cantilever into a collector in order to take height measurements as the tip is dragged across a surface (Figure). The AFM is usually used to created highly precise topographical maps of surfaces, but in some cases is used to create micrometer-sized structure (or smaller) on a substrate by increasing the tip-surface interaction strength and applied load on the probe. The probe causes mechanical deformation to create these structures, which can be as small as 50 nm (Bai). These nanoscopic tips are used to make indentations on a thin layer of polymer. These indentations would represent bits. The result is akin to that in a punch card, the long forgotten technology. The difference being that the millipede memory can be re-written and that the area for a single indentation in the punched cards can store thousands of bits in the millipede memory. Techniques that use nanometer-sharp tips for imaging and investigating the structure of materials down to the atomic scale, such as the atomic force microscope (AFM) and the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) are suitable for the development of ultrahigh-density storage devices. As the simple tip is a very reliable tool for the ultimate local confinement of interaction, tip-based storage technologies can be regarded as natural candidates for extending the physical limits that are being approached by conventional magnetic storage. The areal densities that todays magnetic recording technologies can achieve will eventually reach a limit imposed by the well-known super paramagnetic effect. Several proposals have been

formulated to overcome this limit, for ex- ample the adoption of patterned magnetic media, for which, however, the biggest challenge remains the patterning of the magnetic disk in a cost-effective manner. On the other hand, data rates of 1 GB/s or more are achieved by magnetic recording, whereas the mechanical resonant frequencies of the AFM cantilevers limit the data rates of a single cantilever to a few Mb/s for AFM data storage. Moreover, the feedback speed and low tunneling currents limit STM-based storage approaches to even lower data rates. The solution for

substantially increasing the data rates achieved by tip-based storage devices is to employ micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS)-based arrays of cantilevers operating in parallel, with each cantilever performing write/read/erase operations in an individual storage field. A MEMS-actuated magnetic probe-based storage system is described and the references therein. A magnetic storage medium is positioned in the x/y plane, and

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writing is achieved magnetically by using an array of probe tips, each tip being actuated in the z-direction. An atomic resolution storage concept is described, in which electron field emitters are employed to change the state of a phase-change medium in a bit-wise fashion. With the use nanometer scale tips as read/write heads and nanoscopic inscription techniques, the Millipede memory technology is a serious candidate for the forthcoming nanoscopic age. It meets all the requirements as a replacement technology for the current secondary storage technologies and also provides the space for further developments and future research.

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SYSTEM DESIGN

WRITE OPERATION
The Millipede device shown is a highly parallel scanning-probe data-storage system. Information is stored as sequences of indentations and no indentations that are written on nanometer-thick polymer films using an array of AFM cantilevers. Indentations and no indentations will be also referred to as logical marks. Each cantilever performs write/read operations over an individual storage field with area on the order of 100 100 m2. Thermo mechanical writing is achieved by applying a local force through the cantilever/tip to the polymer layer, and simultaneously softening the polymer layer by local heating. Initially, the heat transfer from the tip to the polymer through the small contact area is very poor, but improves as the contact area increases. This means that the tip must be heated to a relatively high temperature of about 400 C to initiate the softening. Once softening has been initiated, the tip is pressed into the polymer, and hence the indentation size is increased.

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The above figure shows recent results from a single-lever experiment, where indentations are spaced as closely as 25 nm apart, resulting in areal densities up to 1Tb/in.2, although at a somewhat degraded write/read quality.

READ OPERATION
To read the written information, the heater cantilever originally used for writing is given the additional function of a thermal read back sensor by exploiting its temperature-dependent resistance. In general, the resistance increases nonlinearly with heating power/temperature from room temperature to a peak value at 500700 C. The peak temperature is determined by the doping concentration of the heater platform, which ranges from1 1017 to 2 1018 cm3. Above the peak temperature, the resistance drops as the number of intrinsic carriers increases be- cause of thermal excitation. For sensing, the resistor is operated at about 350 C, a temperature that is not high enough to soften the polymer as in the case of writing. The principle of thermal sensing is based on the fact that the thermal conductance between the heater platform and the storage substrate changes according to the distance between them. The medium between the heater platform and the storage substrate, in our case air, transports heat from the cantilever to the substrate. When the distance between cantilever and storage substrate is reduced as the tip moves into a bit indentation, the heat transport through the air becomes more efficient. As a result, the evolution of the heater temperature differs in response to a pulse applied to the cantilever. In

particular, the maximum value achieved by the temperature is higher if there is no bit indentation. As the value of the variable resistance depends on the temperature of the

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cantilever, the maximum value achieved by the resistance will be lower as the tip moves into an indentation. Therefore, during the read process, the cantilever resistance reaches different values depending on whether the tip moves into an indentation (bit 1) or over a region without an indentation (bit 0). The thermomechanical cantilever sensor, which transforms temperature into an electrical signal that carries information, is the electrical equivalent, to a first degree of approximation, of a variable resistance. A detection circuit must therefore sense a voltage that depends on the value of the cantilever resistance to decide whether a 1 or a 0 is written. The relative variation of thermal resistance is on the order of 105 /nm. Hence a written bit 1 typically produces a relative change of the cantilever thermal resistance R /R of about 104 to 5 104. Note that the relative change of the cantilever electrical resistance is of the same order of magnitude. Thus, one of the most critical issues in detecting the presence or absence of an indentation is the high resolution required to extract the signal that contains the information about the bit being 1 or 0. The signal carrying the information can be regarded as a small signal super imposed on a very large offset signal. The large offset problem can be mitigated by resorting to a dedicated reference cantilever, as will be described in the next section.

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ERASE OPERATION

Erasing of bits is achieved by exploiting to the so-called pile- up phenomenon, whereby rings of polymer appear around in- dentations as a result of the write process. If the ring of a new indentation is extended over the region of a previously written bit 1, then the depth of the previous indentation decreases markedly [9]. Therefore, by properly adjusting the distance between successive indentations, it is possible to achieve the function of erasing at the line even bit level. Write/read operations depend on a mechanical parallel x/y scanning of either the entire cantilever array chip or the storage medium. The tip-medium contact is

maintained and con- trolled globally, i.e. not on an individual cantilever basis, by using a feedback control for the entire chip, which greatly simplifies the system. Early results demonstrating the concept of the entire chip approach/leveling [14] indicate that overall chip tip-apex height control to within 500 nm is feasible. The stringent requirement for tip-apex uniformity over the entire chip is determined by the uniform force required to reduce tip and medium wear due to large force variations resulting from large tip-height non uniformities [15]. As the Millipede tracks the en- tire array without individual lateral cantilever positioning, thermal expansion of the array chip has to be small or well con- trolled. For a 3 3 mm2 silicon array area and tip-position accuracy of 10 nm, the chip temperature has to be controlled to within about 1 C. This is ensured by four temperature sensors in the corners of the array and heater elements on each side of the array. Thermal expansion considerations are a strong argument for a two-dimensional instead of a onedimensional array arrangement, which would make a chip 32 times longer for a 3232 array of cantilevers.

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READ CHANNEL MODEL:


In this section, we consider the read back channel for a single cantilever, scanning a storage field where bits are written as indentations or no indentations. The circuit diagram used as read channel model, which we consider for the analysis of the detection system, is illustrated in Fig1. As discussed earlier, a cantilever can be considered as a variable resistance that depends on the temperature at the cantilever tip. To evaluate the evolution of the temperature of a heated cantilever during the read process, we use a simple RC-equivalent thermal circuit, as illustrated in Fig 2 where denote the thermal resistance and capacitance, respectively. The

parameter indicates the relative variation of thermal resistance resulting from the small change in the air gap width between the cantilever tip and the storage medium when an indentation is present, as compared to the case with no indentations. Here subscript x indicates the x-distance in the direction of scanning from the initial point. Therefore, the parameter x will assume the largest absolute value when the tip of the cantilever is located at the center of an indentation. The heating power that is dissipated in the cantilever heater region is expressed as

Where

VC (t)

is the voltage across the cantilever, T (t,x) is the cantilever

temperature, and Re(T (t,x))is the temperature-dependent cantilever resistance.

Figure1: Block diagram of the detection circuit.

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As the heat-transfer process depends on the value of the thermal resistance and on the read-pulse waveform, temperature T(x, t) depends on time t and distance x. However, as the time it takes for the cantilever to move from the center of a logical mark to the next is much larger than the duration of a read pulse, we assume that T(x,t) does not vary significantly as a function of x during the period a read pulse is applied, and that it decays to the ambient temperature To before the next pulse is applied. Therefore the evolution of the cantilever temperature in response to a pulse applied at time t=xo/v, at a certain distance xo from the initial point of scanning and for a certain constant velocity v of the scanner, obeys a first order ,first degree differential equation involving T w.r.t to time t say, eqn.(2) given below T (t, x0) + [(T (t,x0)-T0)/ (RT(1+ xo)CT) ] = V2 C(t) /[( CTRe(T(t,x0)]

Figure 2: RC equivalent thermal model of the heat transfer process.

With reference to the block diagram of the read channel illustrated in Fig .the source generates the read pulse that is applied to the cantilever variable resistance. Furthermore, the active low-pass RC detector filter used to eliminate high frequency noise, where Rlpf and Clpf denote the resistance and capacitance of the low-pass filter, respectively, is realized using an ideal operational amplifier that exhibits infinite input impedance, zero output impedance, and infinite frequencyindependent gain. The read back signal Vo (t,xo) which is obtained at the low-pass filter output in response to the applied voltage Vp(t) where, Vp (t) = Arect ((t-t0)) and rect (t/ ) = 1 for 0t 0 elsewhere Vp (t) obeys a complex differential equation, say equation (3) presented here.

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V0 (t, x0)=(Rlpf Clpf)-1 [ -Vo(t,x0)+ [ Rlpf x Vp (t)]/(Re(T(t,x0)) ] As the voltage at the output of the low-pass filter depends on the variable resistance value the read back signal is determined by solving jointly the differential equations Vo(to,x),with initial conditions T(xo,to)=To, Vo (to,xo)=0 the duration of the applied rectangular pulse. Assuming that ideal control of the scanner is performed, such that the time of application of a read pulse corresponds either to the cantilever being located at the center of an indentation for detecting a bit .1., or away from an indentation for detecting a bit .0., two possible responses are obtained at the output of the low- pass filter as solutions of (2) and (4), which we denote by Vo (ts, xo|xo=1)-Vo (ts, xo|xo=0) respectively. By sampling the read back signal at the instant,ts=to+ Simple threshold detection may be applied to detect a bit. The threshold voltage is given by: VTh=1/2[Vo (ts, xo|xo=1) +Vo (ts, xo|xo=0)] The read back signal (6) at the output of the low-pass filter is observed in the presence of additive noise. Therefore, the read back signal for detection of the i-th binary symbol is given by r (ts, i) =s (t s, i) +w (t s, i) Where w (t) denotes the noise signal. The components of the noise signal that must be taken into account are thermal noise from the sensor and the reference cantilever resistances, which during the read process achieve a temperature of about 350C, and from the low-pass filter resistance, as well as noise from equivalent noise sources in the operational amplifier. To determine system performance, we evaluate the signal-to-noise ratio at the detection point, expressed as SNR = 10log10 (V2th1/2w) Where, Vth1 is the threshold voltage at detection and is 2w the variance of noise.

CONTROL MODEL:
Write/read operations depend on a mechanical parallel x/y scanning of either the entire cantilever array chip or the storage medium. The tip-medium contact is maintained and controlled as a whole, i.e., not on an individual cantilever basis, by using a common control for the entire chip, which greatly simplifies the system. As the Millipede tracks the entire array without individual cantilever
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positioning, thermal expansion of the array chip has to be small. For 33 mm2 silicon array area and 10-nm tip-position accuracy, the chip temperature has to be controlled to about 1C. This is ensured by four temperature sensors in the corner of the array and heater elements on each side of the array. Thermal-expansion is the reason why two-dimensional arrays are preferred over one dimensional ones which would utilise space on the storage medium more efficiently

Figure 3: Comparison between (a) the read back signal obtained experimentally along a data track and (b) the read back signal obtained by the synthetic model.
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FIRST GENERAION MILLIPEDE:


As a first step,a (5x5) array chip was designed and fabricated to test the basic Millipede concept. All 25 cantilevers had integrated tip heating for thermo mechanical writing and piezoresistive deflection sensing for read-back. Each cantilever was individually addressable for both thermo mechanical writing and piezoresistive deflection sensing. A complete resistive bridge for integrated detection has also been incorporated for each cantilever. Unfortunately, the chip was not able to demonstrate parallel writing because of electro migration problems due to temperature and current density in the Al wiring of the heater. Once global leveling was proven as a reliable concept and (Al) wiring was avoided, the millipede was a realizable device. Using the results of the (55) cantilever array, a (3232) array chip was made with some important changes in the chip functionality and fabrication process. The major differences are:. 1) Surface micromachining to form cantilevers at the wafer surface. 2) All silicon cantilevers 3) Thermal instead of piezoresistive sensing 4) First and second-level wiring with an insulating layer for a multiplexed row/column addressing scheme. Since the heater platform was both a write/read element and no individual cantilever actuation was required, the basic array cantilever cell became a simple device.

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SYSTEM ASPECTS
In this Section, they have described various aspects of a storage sys- tem that employs the Millipede concept. Each cantilever can write data to and read data from a dedicated area of the polymer substrate, called a storage field. As mentioned

above, in each storage field the presence (absence) of an indentation corresponds to a logical 1 (0). All indentations are nominally of equal depth and size. The logical marks are placed at a fixed horizontal distance from each other along a data track. We re- fer to this distance, measured from logical mark center to logical mark center, as the bit pitch (BP). The vertical (cross-track) distance between logical mark centers, the track pitch (TP), is also fixed. To read and write data the polymer medium is moved under the (stationary) cantilever array at a constant velocity. A robust way to achieve synchronization and servo control in an x/y-actuated l a r ge 2D array is by reserving a small number of storage fields exclusively for timing recovery and servo- control purposes. Because of the large number of levers in the Millipede, this solution is advantageous in terms of overhead compared with the alternative of timing and servo information being embedded in all data fields.

A. PES generation for the servo loop

With logical marks as densely spaced as in the Millipede, accurate track following becomes a critical issue. Track following means controlling the position of each tip such that the tip is always positioned over the center of a desired track during reading. During writing, the tip position should be such that the written marks are aligned in a predefined way. In electro- mechanical systems, track following is performed in a servo loop, which is driven by an appropriate error signal, called PES. Ideally, its magnitude is a direct estimate of the vertical (cross- track) distance of the tip from the track centerline, and its polarity indicates the direction of this offset. Several approaches exist to generate a PES for AFM-based storage devices. However, based on the results reported, none of these methods can achieve the trackfollowing accuracy required for the Millipede system. The quality of the PES directly affects the stability and robustness of the associated tracking servo loop .

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Here we describe a method for generating a uniquely decodable PES for the Millipede system. The method is based on the concept of mutually vertically

displaced bursts,arranged in such a way as to produce two signals in quadrature,which can be combineed to provide a robust PES. This concept is borrowed from magnetic recording ; however, servo marks, as op- posed to magnetic transitions, are placed in bursts labelled A and B for the inphase signal, and C and D for the quadrature signal. The centers of servo marks in burst B are vertically offset from mark centers in burst A by dr units of length. This amount of vertical spacing is related to the diameter of the written marks. The same principle applies to marks in the quadrature bursts C and D, with the additional condition that mark centers in burst C are offset by dr /2 units from mark centers in A in the cross-track direction. The latter condition is required in order to generate a quadrature signal. The configuration of servo bursts is illustrated in Fig. 8 for a case where TP = 3dr /2. Although each burst typically consists of many marks to enable averaging of the corresponding readout signals, only two marks per burst are shown here to simplify the presentation.The solid horizontal lines depict track centerlines, and circles represent written marks, which are modeled as perfect conical indentations on the polymer storage surface.

Fig. 8. Servo burst configuration.

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To illustrate the principle of PES generation let us assume that marks in all bursts are spaced BP units apart in the longitudinal direction, and that sampling occurs exactly at mark centers, so that timing is perfect1 . Referring to Fig. 8, let us further assume that the cantilever/tip is located on the line la- beled 0 and moves vertically towards line 3, in a line crossing the centers of the left-most marks in burst A (shown as a dash-dotted line). The tip moves from the edge of the top mark towards its center, then towards its bottom edge, then to a blank space, again to a mark, and so on. The readout signal magnitude decreases linearly with the distance from the mark center and reaches a constant, background level value at a distance greater than the mark radius from the mark center according to the adopted (conical mark) model. To synthesize the in-phase signal, the readout signal is also captured as the tip (conceptually) moves in a vertical line crossing the mark centers of burst B (dashdotted line in Figure). B , where A and B stand The in-phase signal is then formed as the difference A for the measured signal amplitudes in bursts A and B, respectively. This signal is represented by the line labeled I in Fig. 9. It has zero-crossings at integer multiples of dr , which do not generally correspond to track centers because we set TP = 3dr /2 in this example. Therefore the I-signal is not a valid PES in it- self. This is why in this case the quadrature (Q) signal becomes necessary. The Q-signal is generated D , and is also shown in from the servo read back signals of bursts C and D as C Fig. 9 (Q-curve). Note that it exhibits zero-crossings at points where the I-signal has local extrema. A certain combination of the two signals (I and Q), shown as solid lines in Fig. 9, has zero- crossings at all track center locations and constant (absolute) slope, which qualifies it as a valid PES. However, this PES exhibits zero-crossings at all integer multiples of dr /2. For our example of TP = 3dr /2, three such zero-crossings exist in an area of width equal to TP around any track centerline. This fact, however, does not hamper unique position decoding. At even- numbered tracks, it is the zero of the inphase signal that indicates the track center. The zeros of the quadrature signal, in turn, can be uniquely mapped into a position estimate by examining the polarity of the inphase signal at the corresponding positions. This holds for any value of the combined PES within an area of width equal to TP around each current track centerline. The signals exchange roles for odd- numbered tracks. The current track number, which
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is known a priori from the seek operation, is used to determine the mode of operation for the position demodulation procedure.

Fig. 9. Ideal position-error signal.

The principle of PES generation based on servo marks has been verified experimentally. For this purpose, A, B, C and D bursts were written by an AFM cantilever/tip on an appropriate polymer medium consisting of a polymer coating on top of a silicon substrate. The bit pitch was set to 42 nm, and the track pitch was taken to be approximately equal to dr, the cross-track distance between A (C) and B (D) bursts. An image created by reading the written pattern with the same cantilever is shown in Fig. 10. Shaded areas indicate indentations. The readout signal from the cantilever was also used for servo demodulation, as described above. The resulting In-phase and quadrature signals are shown in figure. The track centerlines are indicated by vertical dotted lines in the graph. It can be observed that the zero-crossings of the in-phase signal are closely aligned with the track centerlines, and also with the minima and maxima of the quadrature signal, as required for unique position decoding across all possible cross-track positions, at least in cases where T P = dr . Moreover, the PES slope is nearly linear along a cross-track width of one track pitch around each track center, as T P dr in this case, although deviations from the ideal signal shape exist. These deviations occur mainly because written indentations do not have perfect conical shapes, and also because of media noise due to the roughness of the recording
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medium. Nevertheless, the experimentally generated error signals indicate that the proposed concept is valid and promising. Specifically, the results indicate that

servo self-writing is feasible, that servo demodulation is almost identical to data readout and can be performed by any cantilever without special provisions, and that the PES generated closely approximates the desirable features described earlier.

Fig. 10. Experimental A, B, C, and D servo bursts (BP = 42 nm).

Fig. 11. Demodulated in-phase (solid line) and quadrature (dashed line) PES basedon the servo burst of Fig. 10.

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B. Timing recovery
Similarly to obtaining servo information based on using dedicated servo fields, we employ separate dedicated clock fields for recovery of timing information. The concept is to have continuous access to a pilot signal for synchronization, after initial phase acquisition and gain estimation. The recovered clock is then distributed to all remaining storage fields to allow reliable detection of random data. Initial phase acquisition is obtained by a robust correlation algorithm, gain estimation is based on averaging of the read back signal obtained from a predefined stored pattern, and finally tracking of the optimum sampling phase is achieved by a second-order digital loop. At the beginning of the read process, several signal parameters need to be estimated prior to data detection. Besides the clock phase and frequency, it is necessary to estimate the gain of the overall read channel. To solve the problem of initial estimation of signal parameters prior to data detection, the sequence written in the clock field consists of a preamble, followed by a pattern of all 1s for tracking the optimum sampling phase during the detection of random data. The transition between the preamble and the pattern of all 1s must be reliably detected, as it indicates the start of data records to the remaining storage fields. Assuming that the initial frequency offset is within a pre- determined small range, usually 1000 part-per-million (PPM), we distinguish the tasks that are needed for timing recovery as follows: Acquisition of the optimum sampling phase. Estimation of the overall channel gain needed for threshold detection. Detection of the transition between the preamble and the pattern of all 1s, and tracking of the optimum sampling phase. At the beginning of the acquisition process, an estimate of the optimum sampling phase is obtained by resorting to a correlation method. We rely on the knowledge of the preamble and of an ideal reference-channel impulse response, which closely resembles the actual impulse response . The channel output samples obtained at the oversampling rate q/T are first processed by removing the dc-offset, then

averaging, and finally correlating the resulting sequence with the reference impulse response to determine the phase estimate. After determining the estimate of the optimum sampling phase, an estimate of the overall channel gain is obtained by averaging the amplitude of the channel output
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samples at the optimum sampling instants. The gain estimate is obtained from an initial segment of the preamble corresponding to an all one binary pattern. As mentioned earlier, it is necessary that the end of the preamble is indicated by a sync pattern, which marks the transition between acquisition mode and tracking mode. Detection of the sync pattern is also based ona robust cor- relation method. After the sync pattern, an all one pattern, as in the case of robust phase acquisition and gain estimation, is employed for tracking. The all one pattern

corresponds to regularly spaced indentations, which convey reliable timing information.

Tracking of the optimum sampling phase is achieved by the second-order loop configuration shown in Fig. 12. Assuming data detection is performed at instants that correspond to inte- ger multiples of the oversampling factor q, the deviation of the sampling phase from the optimum sampling phase is estimated as

i = r(ts,iq+1 ) r(ts,iq 1 ) .

This estimate of the phase deviation is input to a second-order loop filter, which provides an output given by Ti = ui + i , where the discrete-time integrator is recursively updated as ui+1 = ui + i . The loop-filter output then determines the control signal for a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO)

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C. Considerations on capacity and data rate


The ultimate locality provided by nanometer-sharp tips rep- resents the pathway to the high areal density that will be needed in the foreseeable future. The intrinsic nonlinear interactions between closely spaced indentations, however, determine the minimum distance between successive indentations and hence the areal density. Todays storage capacity of a Millipede-based storage de- vice can be further increased by applying modulation or con- strained codes that impose restrictions on the number of consecutive 1s and 0s in the encoded data sequence. This class of codes is generally known as run-length-limited (RLL) (d, k) codes . The code parameters d and k are nonnegative integers with k > d, where d indicates the minimum number of 0s between two 1s and k indicates the maximum number of zeros between two 1s. For the Millipede application, where dedicated clock fields are used, the k parameter can be set to infinity, thereby facilitating the code-design process. The quantity (d + 1) R, where R denotes the rate of the (d, k) code, is a direct measure of the increase in linear recording density. Clearly, the packing density can be made arbitrarily large by increasing d. On the other hand, large values of d lead to codes with very low rate, which implies high recording symbol rates, thus rendering these codes impractical for storage systems that are limited by the clock speed. The choice of d = 1 and k 6 guarantees the existence of a code with rate R = 2/3. Use of (d = 1, k 6) modulation coding reduces the bit distance by half while maintaining constant the pitch between 1s, thereby increasing the linear density by a factor of 4/3. Similarly, the choice of d = 2 and k > 6 guarantees the existence of a code with rate R = 1/2. Use of (d = 2, k > 6) Modulation coding reduces the bit distance to a third while maintaining constant the pitch between 1s, thereby increasing the linear density by a factor of 3/2. Table shows the achievable areal densities and storage capacities for a (3232) cantilever array with 1024 storage fields, each having an area of 100 100 m 2 ,resulting in total storage area of 3.2 3.2 mm2. The indentation pitch and the track pitch are set equal to 30 nm. Finally, for the computation of the storage capacity an overall efficiency of 85% has been assumed, taking into account the redundancy of the outer error-correction coding as well as the presence of dedicated servo and clock fields.

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Fig. 13.User data rate versus number of active cantilevers for the (d = 1, k 6) coding scheme. Curve 1: T = 20 s; curve 2: T = 10 s; curve 3: T = 5 s; curve 4: T = 2 s, and curve 5: T = 1 s. Figure 13 shows the user data rate as a function of the total number of cantilevers accessed simultaneously, for various symbol rates and a (d = 1, k 6) modulation coding scheme. For example, for a (3232) cantilever array, a system designed to access a maximum of 256 cantilevers every T = 5 s provides a user data rate of 34.1 Mb/s. Alternatively, by resorting to the row/column multiplexing scheme with T = 80 s a data rate of 8.5 Mb/s is achieved.

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APPLICATIONS:
There are many applications for the Millipede chip in storage devices. The concept and design vary according to the required application. Two cases in particular are discussed below.

Terabit Drive:
The potential for very high storage density makes the Millipede very attractive for high-end terabit storage applications also. Terabit capacity can be achieved in three methods:

1)Very large arrays. 2)Many smaller arrays operating in parallel and 3)Displacement of small/medium sized arrays over large disk. Though realization of considerably larger arrays (105 to 106 cantilevers) appears to be possible, control of the thermal linear expansion will be a delimiting factor as the array chip becomes significantly larger and control problems will definitely arise. The second approach is appealing because the storage system can be upgraded to fulfill our requirements in a modular fashion by operating many smaller Millipede units in parallel. The operation of the third approach is described with the example of a modified hard disk. This approach has the advantage of integration of new technology with our existing systems. A number of small arrays on the disk which can be accessed in a way similar to that of the present hard drive enhance the storage capacity greatly while keeping the basic principle unchanged. A storage capacity of several terabits appears to be achievable on 2.5- and 3.5-in. disks.

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Nanodrive:
Using the concept of Millipede, storage devices with gigabyte capacity having a very small form factor in the range of centimeters and even millimeters can be made possible. Hence this concept opens up possibilities to integrate such Nanodrives into low power consuming devices such as watches, cellular telephones, laptops, etc. Millipede based nanodrives have interesting prospects for audio and video consumer applications. All-silicon, batch fabrication, low-cost polymer media, and low power consumption make Millipede very attractive as a centimeter- or even millimeter-sized gigabyte storage system.

Cantilever: It is a silicon platform whose one end is fixed and a probe tip is attached to another end which is free to move in the vertical axis by the application of a mechanical force.

AFM(Atomic Force Microscope):


This is an instrument with a scanning tip which sends signals that depend on the magnitude of the atomic forces between particles on the surface and the tip. As the

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strength of these signals depend on the distance between the tip and the particle, they can be used to interpret the distribution of particles on the sample surface

STM(Scanning Tunneling Microscope):


In this instrument a voltage is applied to the sharp tip which is very close to the surface of the sample. This voltage attracts electrons from the material of the surface resulting in weak current. As the current magnitude depends on the distance between the tip and the particle on the surface a three dimensional plot can be drawn which gives an idea about the sample surface.

Thermo mechanical sensor:


This senses the variations of temperature and sends electrical signals whose value depends on the magnitude of temperature differences.

Form factor:
This is defined as the area required to store 1Gbit of data. It is usually in the order of centimeters for a Millipede device.

Piezoresistive sensing:
This type of read mode was used in first generation Millipede devices. In this type of sensing, an applied electric signal bends the cantilever which moves into the pit (in case of 1) and mechanical strain is developed. Due to piezoelectric effect, an electric pulse is produced, which when sent to the resistor bridge, produces a voltage which is detected by a detection circuit.

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WRITE

READ

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SOFTWARE SPECIATIONS
The present day specifications for a (3232) Millipede device are. 1. The cell area and x/y cantilever pitch is 92 m x 92 m, which results in a total array size of less than 3 mm x 3 mm for the 1024 cantilevers. 2. The cantilever is fabricated entirely of silicon for good thermal and mechanical stability. It consists of the heater platform with the tip on top, the legs acting as a soft mechanical spring, and an electrical connection to the heater. They are highly doped to minimize interconnection resistance and replace the metal wiring on the cantilever to eliminate electro migration. 3. The resistive ratio between the heater and the silicon interconnection sections should be as high as possible; currently the highly doped interconnections are 400 and the heater platform is 11 k (at 4 V reading bias). 4. The cantilever must be soft (low mass) to avoid high loading forces and to achieve high resonant frequencies. This leads to less wear and tear and higher speed of operation. 5. Keeping the above considerations in mind, the array cantilever is designed to be 50m-long, 10-m-wide, 0.5-m-thick at the legs, and 5-m-wide, 10-mlong, 0.5-mthick at the platform platform. This cantilever has a stiffness of 1 N/m and a resonant frequency of 200 kHz. 6.The heater time constant is a few microseconds,which should allow a multiplexing rate of 100 kHz. 7. A large gap is required between the tip and the medium, but the tips must be sort to improve sensitivity, we purposely bent the cantilevers a few micrometers out of the chip plane by depositing a silicon nitride layer at the base of the cantilever. 8. The cantilevers within the array are electrically isolated from one another by integrated Schottky diodes. Because every parasitic path in the array to the addressed cantilever of interest contains a reverse-biased diode, the crosstalk current is drastically reduced. 9. The tip-apex height uniformity within an array is to be maintained because it determines The force of each cantilever while in contact with the medium and hence influences write/read performance as well as medium and tip wear.

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Application software:
The following applications have been installed on millipede and can be used afterloading the corresponding module. The force of each cantilever whie in contact with the medium and hence influences write/read performance as well as medium and tip wear. A set of bioinformatics software (ABySS, bedtools, bowtie, bwa, cufflinx, fastqc, fastx, gmap-gsnap, samtools, tophat, trinity) Gamess-US Gromacs Matlab Meep Nwchem Rroot SPSS And others ....

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HARDWARE: Technical Background:


The core of the Millipede project is a two-dimensional array of v-shaped silicon cantilevers that are 0.5 micrometers thick and 70 micrometers long. At the end of each cantilever is a downward-pointing tip less than 2 micrometers long. The current experimental setup contains a 3 mm by 3 mm array of 1,024 (32 x32) cantilevers, which are created by silicon surface micromachining. A sophisticated design ensures accurate leveling of the tip array with respect to the storage medium and dampens vibrations and external impulses. Time-multiplexed electronics, similar to that used in DRAM chips, address each tip individually for parallel operation. Electromagnetic actuation precisely moves the storage medium beneath the array in both the x- and ydirections, enabling each tip to read and write within its own storage field of 100 micrometers on a side. The short distances to be covered help ensure low power consumption. For the operation of the device -- i.e. reading, writing, erasing and overwriting -- the tips are brought into contact with a thin polymer film coating a silicon substrate only a few nanometers thick. Bits are written by heating a resistor built into the cantilever to a temperature of typically 400 degrees Celsius. The hot tip softens the polymer and briefly sinks into it, generating an indentation. For reading, the resistor is operated at lower temperature, typically 300 degrees Celsius, which does not soften the polymer. When the tip drops into an indentation, the resistor is cooled by the resulting better heat transport, and a measurable change in resistance occurs. To over-write data, the tip makes a series of offset pits that overlap so closely their edges fill in the old pits, effectively erasing the unwanted data. More than 100,000 write/over-write cycles have demonstrated the re-write capability of this concept. While current data rates of individual tips are limited to the kilobits-per-second range, which amounts to a few megabits for an entire array, faster electronics will allow the levers to be operated at considerably higher rates. Initial nanomechanical experiments done at IBM's Almaden Research Center showed that individual tips could support data rates as high as 1 - 2 megabits per second. Power consumption greatly depends on the data rate at which the device is operated. When operated at data rates of a few megabits per second, Millipede is expected to

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consume about 100 milliwatts, which is in the range of flash memory technology and considerably below magnetic recording. The 1,024-tip experiment achieved an areal density of 200 gigabits (billion bits, Gb) per square inch, which translates to a potential capacity of about 0.5 gigabytes (billion bytes, GB) in an area of 3 mm-square. The next-generation Millipede prototype will have four times more tips: 4,096 in a 7 mm-square (64 by 64) array.

Need of Millipede: Flash memory is not expected to surpass 1-2 gigabytes of capacity in the near term, Millipede technology could pack 10 - 15 gigabytes of data into the same tiny format, without requiring more power for device operation. "The Millipede project could bring tremendous data capacity to mobile devices such as personal digital assistants, cellular phones, and multifunctional watches, Using revolutionary nanotechnology, scientists have made it to the millionths of a millimeter range, achieving data storage densities of more than one terabit (1000 gigabit) per square inch, equivalent to storing the content of 25 DVDs on an area the size of a postage stamp. The Millipede concept: The main memory of modern computers is constructed from number of DRAM -related devices. DRAM basically consists of a series of capacitors, which store data as the presence or absence of electrical charge. Each capacitor and its associated control circuitry, referred to as a cell, holds one bit, and bits can be read or written in large blocks at the same time. Hard drives store data on a metal disk that is covered with a magnetic material; data is represented as local magnetization of this material. Millipede storage attempts to combine the best features of both. Like the hard drive, millipede stores data in a "dumb" medium that is simpler and smaller than any cell used in an electronic medium. Writing data Bits are written by heating a resistor built into the cantilever to a temperature of 400 degrees Celsius. The hot tip softens the polymer and briefly sinks into it, & generating an indentation. Reading Data for reading, the resistor is operated at lower temperature, typically 300 degrees Celsius, which does not soften the polymer. When the tip drops into an indentation, the resistor is cooled by the resulting better heat transport, and a measurable change in resistance occurs.

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Overwriting Data to over-write data, the tip makes a series of offset pits that overlap so closely their edges fill in the old pits, effectively erasing the unwanted data. The write or overwrite cycles are limited to 1, 00,000 cycles. Stored bits states that more than 80 percent of the 1,024 cantilevers of an experimental setup were able to write data (12 storage areas at right). Stored bits the close-ups (center) present 40 nm (nanometers) wide indentations at a " pitch " (distance between centers of neighboring indentations) of 120 nm (left) and 40 nm (right), pitch. The latter leading to areal density of ca. 400 GB per square inch. The same magnification factor has been applied to the image at the bottom, which demonstrates the potential for Terabit-persquare-inch density with 10-nm-diameter marks at a 20-nm Cantilever : The core components of probe storage system are a twodimensional array of silicon probes (cantilevers) and a micro-mechanical scanner which moves the storage medium relative to the array. For the device to perform its reading, writing and erasing functions, the cantilever tips are brought into contact with the storage medium a thin film of a custom designed cross-linked polymer coated on a silicon substrate, which is moved in the x- and y-directions. The storage medium is positioned with nanometer-scale accuracy relative to the cantilever array. Manufacturing Cantiliver : Our most recent array design consists of an array of 64 64 cantilevers (4096) on a 100 m pitch. The 6.4 6.4 mm array is fabricated on a 10 10 mm silicon chip using a newly developed "transfer and join" technology that allows the direct interconnection of the cantilevers with CMOS electronics . With this technology the cantilevers and CMOS electronics are fabricated on two separate wafers, allowing the processes used in the fabrication to be independently optimized. Using a few additional processes steps, the cantilevers are transferred onto the CMOS wafer, using a soldering process that provides a mechanical and electrical interconnect to the CMOS wafer. About used Cantilevers the cantilevers used in the array are of a threeterminal design, with separate heaters for reading and writing, and a capacitive platform for electrostatic actuation of the cantilevers in the z-direction. The cantilevers are approximately 70 m long, with a 500-700 nm long tip integrated directly above the write heater. The apex of each tip has a radius on the scale of a few nanometers allowing data to be written at extremely high densities.
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About Microscanner : Movement of the storage medium relative to the cantilever array is achieved using a silicon-based x/y microscanner. The scanner consists of a 6.8 6.8 mm scan table, which carries the polymer medium, and a pair of electromagnetic actuators. Both the scan table and the actuators are supported by silicon springs that are 1012 m wide and approximately 400 m thick. The scan table, spring system, and actuator frames are fabricated on a silicon wafer using a deep trench etching process. The scanner chip is mounted on a silicon base plate, which acts as the mechanical ground of the system and provides a clearance of approximately 20 m between its top surface and the bottom surface of the moving parts of the scanner. The scan table can be displaced approximately 120 m in two orthogonal directions (x and y) using the two electromagnetic actuators. Each actuator consists of a pair of permanent magnets mounted in a silicon frame, with a miniature coil mounted between them on the base plate. The actuator motion is coupled to the scan table using a pivot and a mass-balancing scheme, which makes the system robust against external vibrations and shock. Position sensing Positioning information for the closed-loop operation of the scanner is provided by two pairs of thermal position sensors. These sensors are fabricated on the cantilever-array chip and positioned directly above the scan table. The sensors consist of thermally isolated, resistive strip heaters made of moderately doped silicon. Each sensor is positioned above an edge of the scan table and heated by applying a current. A fraction of this heat is conducted through the ambient air into the scan table, which acts as a heat sink. Displacement of the scan table gives rise to a change in the efficiency of this cooling mechanism, resulting in a change in the temperature of the heater and thus a change in its electrical resistance. These sensors provide an effectively linear position signal over the entire 120 m range of the scanner, with a resolution of less than 2 nm in a 10 kHz banwidth. Recording technology In addition to exploring novel methods for writing, reading and erasing data in thermomechanical probe recording, research is pursued in the areas of coding, signal processing and read channel design. In this context, it has been determined that a limiting factor in the areal density that can potentially be reached in thermomechanical probe storage is the intrinsic nonlinear interaction between closely packed indentations. Upon this realization, the storage capacity can be increased by applying (d, k)-constrained codes, similar to the ones used in optical

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disc recording. The d-constraint in particular is instrumental in limiting the interference between successive indentations as well as in increasing the effective areal density of the storage device. Recording Continuous advancements on probe-tip fabrication, storage medium design, and improvements on the writing process and on the read channel design has led to the repeated realization of storage of large amounts of data at densities higher than 1.0 Tb/in and reliable retrieval of the data at raw error rates better than 1E-4. At these error-rate levels, conventional error-correcting codes (ECC) can successfully correct all errors, & there will be no loss of user data. Scanned image of bits recorded and retrieved at an areal density of 1.008 Tb/in, the error rate was less than 1E-4. Signal recorded at the output of the discrete component AFE while scanning a line of bits at 1.008 Tb/in. Usage Scenarios Micro Drives Millipede systems can be used for micro drives, which will feature very small form factor, enabling use in small footprint devices like watches, mobile phones and personal media systems, and at the same time provide high capacity. The very high data density of millipede systems makes them a very good candidate to be put to this use. High-capacity hard drives The Millipede system provides high data density, low seek times, low power consumption and, probably, high reliability. These features make them candidates for building high capacity hard drives, with storage capacity in the range of terabytes. Although the data density of a Millipede is high, the capacity of an individual device is expected to be relatively low -- on the order of single gigabytes. Modern disk Storage IBM 350 the IBM 350 was part of the IBM RAMAC 305, the computer that introduced disk storage technology to the world. IBM introduced the IBM 350 storage unit on September, 1956 before unveiling the entire RAMAC 305 computer nine days later on September. RAMAC stood for "Random Access Method of Accounting and Control." Modern disk Storage IBM 353 the IBM 353 used on the IBM 7030, was similar to the IBM 1302, but with a faster transfer rate. It had a capacity of 2,097,152 (221) 72-bit words (64 data bits and 8 ECC bits) and transferred 125,000 words per second.

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Modern disk Storage IBM 2310 The IBM 2310 Removable Cartridge Drive was introduced with the IBM 1130 in 1965. It could store 512,000 words (1,024,000 bytes) on an IBM 2315 cartridge. A single 14-inch (360 mm) oxide-coated aluminum disk spun in a plastic shell with openings for the read/write arm and two heads Current state of the art the progress of millipede storage to a commercially useful product has been slower than expected. Huge advances in other competing storage systems, notably Flash and hard drives, has made the existing demonstrators unattractive for commercial production. Millipede appears to be in a race, attempting to mature quickly enough at a given technology level that it has not been surpassed by newer generations of the existing technologies by the time it is ready for production. Current state of the art The earliest generation millipede devices used probes 10 nanometers in diameter and 70 nanometers in length, producing pits about 40 nm in diameter on fields 92 m x 92 m. Arranged in a 32 x 32 grid, the resulting 3 mm x 3 mm chip stores 500 megabits of data or 62.5 MB, resulting in an areal density , the number of bits per square inch, on the order of 200 Gbit/in. IBM initially demonstrated this device in 2003, planning to introduce it commercially in 2005. By that point hard drives were approaching 150 Gbit/in, and have since surpassed it.

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VENDOR ANALYSIS
Using an innovative nanotechnology, IBM scientists have demonstrated a data storage density of a trillion bits per square inch -- 20 times higher than the densest magnetic storage available today. IBM achieved this remarkable density -- enough to store 25 million printed textbook pages on a surface the size of a postage stamp -- in a research project code-named "Millipede". Rather than using traditional magnetic or electronic means to store data, Millipede uses thousands of nano-sharp tips to punch indentations representing individual bits into a thin plastic film. The result is akin to a nanotech version of the venerable data processing 'punch card' developed more than 110 years ago, but with two crucial differences: the 'Millipede' technology is re-writeable (meaning it can be used over and over again), and may be able to store more than 3 billion bits of data in the space occupied by just one hole in a standard punch card. Although this unique approach is smaller than today's traditional technologies and can be operated at lower power, IBM scientists believe still higher levels of storage density are possible. "Since a nanometer-scale tip can address individual atoms, we anticipate further improvements far beyond even this fantastic terabit milestone," said Nobel laureate Gerd Binnig, an IBM Fellow and one of the drivers of the Millipede project. "While current storage technologies may be approaching their fundamental limits, this nanomechanical approach is potentially valid for a thousand-fold increase in data storage density." The terabit demonstration employed a single "nano-tip "making indentations only 10 nanometers (millionth of a millimeter) in diameter -- each mark being 50,000 times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. While the concept has been proven with an experimental setup using more than 1,000 tips, the research team is now building a prototype, due to be completed early next year, which deploys more than 4,000 tips working simultaneously over a 7 mm-square field. Such dimensions would enable a complete high-capacity data storage system to be packed into the smallest format used now for flash memory. While flash memory is not expected to surpass 1-2 gigabytes of capacity in the near term, Millipede technology could pack 10 - 15 gigabytes of data into the same tiny format, without requiring more power for device operation.
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"The Millipede project could bring tremendous data capacity to mobile devices such as personal digital assistants, cellular phones, and multifunctional watches," says Peter Vettiger, Millipede project leader. "In addition, we are also exploring the use of this concept in a variety of other applications, such as large-area microscopic imaging, nanoscale lithography or atomic and molecular manipulation."

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STRENGTHS:
1. Very high storage density of about 500Gbit/in2 is possible. 2. High data rates are achieved through massive parallelism. 3. Control loop structure for optimized 2D motion has been established. 4. Track following with nm precision is achieved. 5. It consumes very low power compared to other devices. 6. It has reliable operation with small overhead.

CHALLENGES:
1. The medium must endure long term usage. 2. It must endure long term tip and media wear. 3. Tip uniformly in lever array chip must be maintained. 4. It must be shock resistant and immune to vibrations. 5. Cantilever must be designed for low power reading and writing 6. The area density limits must be exploited to the maximum permissible safe limit. 7. The signals must be processed and detected accurately for proper operation.

ONGOING DEVELOPMENTS:
Millipede technology is operating large 2D AFM arrays for thermo mechanical data storage in thin polymer media. In doing so, it has demonstrated key milestones of the Millipede storage concept. Well-controlled processing techniques are developing to fabricate array chips with good yield and uniformity. This VLSINEMS chip has the potential to open up new perspectives in applications such as scanning probe techniques. Millipede technology is not limited to storage applications, these is applied to other storage medium, including magnetic ones, making Millipede a possible universal parallel write/read head for future storage systems.

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Besides storage, other Millipede applications can be envisioned for large-area, highspeed imaging and high-throughput nanoscalelithography, as well as for atomic and molecular manipulation and modifications. The smoothness of the reflowed medium allowed multiple rewriting of the same storage field. This erasing process does not allow bit-level erasing; it will erase larger storage areas. However, in most applications single-bit erasing is not required anyway, because files or records are usually erased as a whole. These erasing and multiple rewriting processes, as well as bit-stability investigations. Overall system reliability, including bit stability, tip and medium wear, erasing/rewriting.

FUTURE WOK (MEMS IN MILLIPEDE):


MEMS storage enclosures without repairs exhibit unconventional no exponential lifetime distributions. Storage systems would exhibit reliability characteristics quite different from those of disks, whose lifetimes are typically regarded as exponential. Deciding upon a particular architecture, it is also necessary to understand the cost trade-offs between system maintenance and investment on spare devices. The performance of MEMS caching disk is sensitive to various degrees, segment size and workload characteristics. However, we can identify streaming workloads at the controller level and bypass MEMS to minimize its impact on system performance. Techniques that can automatically identify workloads characteristics are desirable.

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CONCLUSION
The field of nano storage is an upcoming field with new discoveries being made every day. This form of storage for example, Millipede has an unprecedented storage density and the possibilities it opens up are limitless. Also, the other advantages possessed the system like speed of access and low power consumption make it an ideal choice to fulfill the burgeoning memory demand. Its small dimensions are an additional advantage as it can be used in portable and mini systems. This technology is in development but further research can only reveal better features which will be incremental towards commercial success. Thus, if the system is promoted properly and developed correctly, it will be the way of the feature for storage systems.

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MILLIPEDE CHIP

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NANO PUNCH CARDS

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MILLIPEDE GAME PCB

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MILLIPEDE CPU LOCATION3

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MODULE 1: INTRODUCTION

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MODULE 2: SYSTEM DESIGN

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MODULE 3: SYSTEM ASPECTS

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MODULE 4: APPLICATONS OF TECHNOLOGY

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MODULE 5: SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

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MODULE 6: HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

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MODULE 7: VENDOR ANALYSIS

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MODULE 8: SWOT ANALYSIS

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MODULE 9: CONCLUSION

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Module 10: SNAP SHOT


8;

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