All-Optical Networks: the Last Piece of the Puzzle

In the 1970s, magnetic bubble memory was expected to be the next big thing in nonvolatile data storage, and there were commercial products from Hitachi, Intel, Rockwell, and TI. Commercial bubble memory devices were fabricated using garnet films, though there was research into the use of other materials.

Due to high cost, bubble memory was successful only in limited niches, so by the mid-1980s it was discontinued. Intel stopped development at the 4 Mbit level; I don't think the other vendors even pushed it that far. Late 1980s research results suggested the possibility of 64 Mbit devices. I suspect that the technology probably wouldn't have scaled much further anyhow.

More recently, IBM has been working on "racetrack memory", which works similarly to magnetic bubble memory.

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