It's hip to be square

IBM researchers are working on a new storage system prototype that stacks modules in a three-dimensional grid of extremely densely packed cubic modules.

The project, called Collective Intelligent Bricks and formerly code-named IceCube (so rumours of this technology being hardcore and straight outta Compton are unfounded then?), uses stacks of cubes about eight inches on a side, each filled with 12 hard drives and six network connections to keep data coursing through the collection. IBM envisions a day when hundreds of these storage bricks are stacked together, eventually with computing bricks in the same assemblage.

By the first quarter of 2003, IBM hopes to have built a three-by-three-by-three-brick prototype with a total of 32 terabytes of storage capacity, said Jai Menon, an IBM fellow and storage research manager at Big Blue's Almaden Research Center in California.

A three-by-three-by-three stack has 27 bricks, but a six-by-six-by-six collection would have 216. With a collection of eight bricks on a side, there would be 512 bricks--6,144 hard drives--in a system a little wider than an adult's arm span.

"This is almost like a revolution in packaging. We're taking advantage of the third dimension," said Almaden researcher Robert Garner. Garner and Menon showed off prototypes of the system Friday.

View: IBM laying storage-brick foundations