Bubble Memory: The Universal Memory That Never Was
Bubble memory was a 1970s non-volatile storage technology that stored data in tiny magnetic domains on a garnet film. It promised the speed of core memory, the density of hard drives, and no moving parts, making it a candidate for a universal memory. But semiconductor memory and hard drives advanced faster, and by the late 1980s, bubble memory had vanished. This article traces its rise and fall, from Andrew Bobeck's invention at Bell Labs to its niche uses and eventual obsolescence.
Bubble memory is largely the brainchild of a single person, Andrew Bobeck.
- bayindirh
I find pretty interesting that the memory is not perfect out of the fab and its defects are coded on its label, hence these defects can be loaded to the device using it as a map, so it can work around these loops while working.
Now, this is even true for flash memory, but this is handled at the controller level and its dynamic during its initial "formatting" at the factory, so it's completely hidden from the host unless "host" is the controller.
OTOH, bubble memory comes with a "this machine has no brain, use your own" sticker on it.
- 10729287
Thanks for the in-depth explanation of this system. One of the most mainstream and famous use of bubble Memory may be the Gradius (Konami) shoot them up PCB and its infamous loading/warmup screen.
- lxgr
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferroelectric_RAM, which has been used in a few quite popular systems as well (e.g. the PS2 memory card supposedly uses it for some high-rewrite-count operations).