Currently it takes about a million atoms to store a bit on a modern hard-disk the researchers from IBM say.

They have recently tested the limits and have managed to get just 12 atoms to store a single data bit. They believe this is the world’s smallest magnetic memory bit.

According to researchers, the technique opens up the possibility of producing much denser forms of magnetic computer storage than the already available hard disk drives and solid state memory chips.

Research lead author, Sebastian Loth, told the BBC: “Roughly every 2 years hard drives become denser. The obvious question is, how long can we keep going? And the fundamental physical limit is the world of atoms. The approach we used was to jump right to the end and find out if we can store information on one atom and if not, how many would we need?”

The researchers found that below 12 atoms, the bits randomly lost data information, owing to quantum effects.    

A bit can have a value of 0 or 1 and is the most basic form of information in computation.