Bubble Memory (en.wikipedia.org)

I find pretty interesting that the memory is not perfect out of the fab and its defects are coded on its label, hence these defects can be loaded to the device using it as a map, so it can work around these loops while working.

Now, this is even true for flash memory, but this is handled at the controller level and its dynamic during its initial "formatting" at the factory, so it's completely hidden from the host unless "host" is the controller.

OTOH, bubble memory comes with a "this machine has no brain, use your own" sticker on it.

Thanks for the in-depth explanation of this system. One of the most mainstream and famous use of bubble Memory may be the Gradius (Konami) shoot them up PCB and its infamous loading/warmup screen.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferroelectric_RAM, which has been used in a few quite popular systems as well (e.g. the PS2 memory card supposedly uses it for some high-rewrite-count operations).

I had initially learned about bubble memory from the Logopolis serial of Doctor Who. I actually went and looked it up after watching it because the concept sounded neat

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Logopolis_(TV_story)

I really enjoyed this 2025 video from The Retro Collective explaining this technology (with some rather fun arts-and-crafts examples) and showing off a Konami arcade board (sadly nonfunctional, but still cool to look at) that used it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVJ9ED8mWt0

We used Intel 7110 magnetic-bubble memory in our mobile robot. CMU early 80s. VMEbus I think it was.

I remember a lot of talk about how transformative bubble memory was going to be circa 1980 and then quit hearing about it.

In Patriot Games by Tom Clancy, there is a scene early in the book where Jack Ryan is talking about the laptop he is using to write his book.

I don't remember the exact specs but am 100% sure he mentions that it has bubble memory.

I worked at a place that evaluated bubble memory, but didn't use it (they had the bubble memory dev. boards). But they did use CCD memory. I remember it was prone to bit errors, which would have been OK if there had been any error correction, but there was not.

https://deramp.com/downloads/mfe_archive/050-Component%20Spe...

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Robert Silverberg's novel "Shadrach In The Furnace", published in the 1970s, had a mention of some data being transported on a "billion-bit bubble chip". In retrospect, that's entertaining in 3 ways: 1) bubble memory didn't go anywhere, and 2) a billion bits is no longer an unthinkable amount of data, 3) solid state memory (which we'll take to include bubble chips here) still hasn't surpassed rotating memory (hard drives, tapes) at least in cost per bit. Maybe someday but not yet.