Hello. I, Ric. Isolinear chips. What do? In Star Trek we routinely see these clear
plastic-looking slips that are plugged into computers, PADDs and other devices. Depending
on the species using them, they can be the Federation style chips, or sometimes rods.
Clearly they are a form of memory storage device like some space age version of a USB
stick. But what exactly makes them different from the devices we have today aside from
presumably being more efficient? Well, quite a bit actually, but also, maybe
not as much as you might thing thanks to currently developing storage mediums. The Isolinear
circuitry as a whole was phased into operation as Federation standard around the early 24th
century, around 2329, but we see them in operation on the newer vessels of 2293. Up until this
point, Starfleet and UFP computers had been operating off of duotronic systems, but with
the advancement into isolinear storage, a new system was implemented. Even this however
is being phased out as by 2371, Starfleet was experimenting with bio-neural circuitry
to replace some key components of a vessel’s nervous system.
However, bio-neural systems are far less mobile than isolinear, so as far as we know, the
two are still being used in tandem with one another. A standard Federation issue isolinear
chip can hold 2.15 kiloquads of information, which doesn’t help much because a quad is
a made-up trek short-hand for a unified measurement of data and we don’t have a byte to quads
conversion. What we do know is the Federation computers
use both binary and trinary code and that an extremely complex holoprogram such as Voyager’s
EMH consisted of well over 12 megaquads, but a simple “on-the-rails” holoprogram, that
didn’t require artificial sentience could fit onto a single chip. Which also gives you
an idea of just how advanced the Doctor was, at least 5,582 chips worth of data. Which
also means that this holo-cube matrix that Moriarty was stored in is probably crazy complex,
and proof that you can make more complicated storage without the size scaling directly.
Thankfully. The isolinear chip is also referred to as
an optical chip which gives as a big clue as to what exactly it is supposed to be, because
thanks to modern advancements, we have them. Basically, in Star trek, the isolinear rod
or chip is a crystalline slab that has information burned into it across multiple layers. It
utilises the same sort of algorithms that holographic technology uses to create complex
3D layers of etched data across this crystal lattice. Because the data is stored across
not only the visible surface layer, but beneath, it allows for things like depth, frequency,
polarisation and other factors to act as additional layers of information storage. Alongside this,
each chip has an on-board nano processor that aided with smart storage and conversions,
presumably to make them compatible with a variety of different technologies, as long
as it was isolinear based in nature. The coloured shells we see in the show are
there to serve as casings for protection and are clear as to allow the crystalline circuitry
inside to still be accessible by the computer when it is plugged in as the crystal itself
is naturally very fragile. The racks of islonear rods we see in engineering
and behind panels across a ship are effectively how you “quick program” a system. Each
isolinear chip has a code or computer function on it so by swapping the order or replacing
chips, you can quickly reprogram a system. Well, more quickly than writing lines of code
from scratch, so long as you know how to handle these chips.
Real life experiments into such optical data storage are promising and seeing active developemnt
with so-called “5d data storage”. This uses fused quartz or a similar crystal material
and a laser burn into it, recording information. Solid progress is being made judging by the
numbers on the wiki page that I don’t understand and the fact that Microsoft has its project
Silica in the works to test a hefty amount of storage in this form. Sufficed to say it
could store up to 360 terabytes and last billions of years before degrading. The 5d part does
not refer to being beyond 3d however, meaning it basically works like the Isolinear rods,
recording information in 3D layers. As far as I can tell, the idea of storing information
in crystal has been floating around for years, but it was the works of Kyoto university and
university of Southampton that made substantial headway on making it a reality.
So, there we go, that is what an Isolinear chip is, a slab of artificial crystal with
information recorded throughout its structure giving it 3 dimensions to play with, vaslty
improving its recording capacity because you can not only view it from one angle to get
one set of data, but another to uncover a whole new layer of information.
This was just a quick video, but I thought I’d make it because it surprised me just
how lore there was in the simple, space USB stick. Then again, didn’t we see these in
TNG before we even had USB sticks? Oh damn. Neat.
Thanks again for watching, and I’ll see you later for another lore, sci-fi or gaming
video. Goodbye!