"A scanning-probe prototype already constitutes a functional non-volatile memory device with areal density exceeding all existing technologies by more than five orders of magnitude."
Does that mean a scanning tunneling microscope is the I/O mechanism? That's been demoed for atom-level storage in the past. But it's too slow for use.
Yes, Tier 1 is scanning probe — C-AFM specifically. Slow but sufficient for proof of concept. The paper describes a Tier 2 architecture using near-field mid-IR arrays for parallel read/write, projecting 25 PB/s aggregate throughput. Tier 1 proves the physics. Tier 2 is the engineering path to speed.