Forbes.com: IBM's Millipede May Challenge Flash Memory

"Millipede will likely offer a cost per gigabyte approximately five times cheaper than flash in high-end cards," Andrews says. "Millipede would make a lot of sense in devices like PDAs and smart phones."

Although other companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Samsung are also pursuing probe-based data storage, IBM says it was among the first at its lab in Zurich to invest heavily in research and development and is poised to be among the first to have probe-based devices on the market, possibly by 2005.

IBM plans to target flash memory immediately, a potential $10 billion market. Beyond that, Millipede could have implications in biotechnology and other nanotechnology fields.