"Even though I as a scientist would totally dig having a scanning tunnelling microscope in every household, I agree it's a very experimental tool," Dr Loth said.

It's no surprise to see IBM leading the way here on research into this kind of technology, how long it will be before it becomes a useful tool in reality is anyone's guess though.

They have issues with putting things near each other for now as they interfer with each other to much. But it is good to see the possible limits and it will at least lead to a lot less atoms and continued high density Drives. It means they do not have to work on crazy out of sigh format such as light cubes for a while at least.
Role on Petabyte for the home sooner then later followed by Exabyte.