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I don't why we should refer to a tri-gate transistor as a "3D transistor". Truely three dimensional integrated circuits have multiple layers on the silicon substrate, so as the laying extends vertically as well. I know only one company that was doing this, Matrix Semiconductor, Inc, and they claim to be the pioneers of the 3-D integrated circuits. http://www.matrixsemi.com/. They are now acquired by SanDisk, Inc.

permenant storage?
http://www.matrixsemi.com/products-and-application s/blank-media.html

Games will cost similarly for both systems for the consumer, but in the case of optical storage, fabrication costs _much_ less

Fabrication of Nintendo DS game cards isn't as much cheaper than fabrication of UMD discs as you'd think, given that Nintendo will soon be moving to new cheaper OTP memories manufactured by Matrix Semiconductor for Nintendo DS game cards. Given that Nintendo could afford to give away DS cards containing the Zelda: Twilight Princess trailer at E3 2005...

The games that _do_ use optical storage get much more storage space as well, offering the gamer more media content, like longer videos, better music, higher polygon models, better textures, key aspects of many modern games, giving developers more degrees of freedom. The only tradeoff is load times

The other tradeoff is that games that use PSP features cost more to produce in the first place, and in the game console software business model, the cost of making the first copy is spread across the purchase price of each of the first million copies or so. Compare Lumines for PSP ($40) to Meteos for Nintendo DS ($30), or any of the high-end games for PSP ($50 each) to any of the high-end games for Nintendo DS ($35 each).

which most gamers will already be used to.

Not necessarily. Gamers who have already owned a handheld system are used to handheld load times, which are rarely if ever more than 5 seconds on the GBC, GBA, or Nintendo DS. On the other hand, one high-profile racing game for PSP is said to take 70 seconds to load a race track that takes 150 seconds to complete.

Ultimately, the PSP will have a bigger library of games than the DS.

The set of PSP titles has to compete not only against the set of Nintendo DS titles but also against the set of GBA titles, as the Nintendo DS hardware plays 99 percent of GBA titles. About 2100 GBA titles have been released (counting multi-region releases as multiple releases).

http://www.matrixsemi.com/Matrix has pioneered the 3D manufacturing of ICs using a slightly modified standard process. Currently they make one-time writteable chips with 8 layers of devices (not full fledged transistors). Their product sell as the memory chips for some Mattel titles on their JuiceBox crapola. They are supposed to come with rewrittable chips some time soon which will mean cheaper Flash like memories for cameras and other things.

The power problem is not as big for memories, as for digital chips, if all you do is take the same devices and put them in 3D, the die area and the capacitance of the wires hence the power will be reduced. But if you make a chip of the same size as today, with N-layers more transistors, it will probably dissipane N-times energy and exceed the heat dissipation of heatsinks.

Hence all you can get from this is a cheaper memory/processor, not much improvement in performance

So did Matrix Semiconductor

Check this out:

http://www.matrixsemi.com/

Notables:

• Price: "Matrix 3DM cards will be comparable in cost to 35mm film and work in a similar fashion"
• Longevity: "Matrix 3-D Memory's array structure results in an archival storage device capable of storing data for more than 100 years."
• Scaling up: "By leveraging the same infrastructure as the rest of the industry, Matrix 3-D Memory will scale at least as fast as other semiconductor technologies, maintaining its significant cost advantage with future process generations."
• Compatibility: "Interchangeable with re-writeable flash cards"
• Capacity: "Comparable cost per megabyte to optical and magnetic storage"

Although successful research has been done to rewritable technologies, they will focus on write-once memories for the time being:
The Matrix model brings a very low cost point into the picture but with a write-once approach. Instead of buying one or two reprogrammable cards for semi-permanent storage, consumers would use many of the write once cards for permanent storage and add cards as needed. The advantage is always having a permanent copy of the file that cannot be erased and is accessible on demand.

/R

A very informative article can be found here. I will quote a piece of that article:
Although the first product is a write-once variant of traditional reprogrammable Flash memory, it is reasonable to assume a fully reprogrammable part is a potential follow on product. The introduction date for this follow on is indeterminate at this time. Matrix has chosen to stay focused on putting the write-once product on designer's roadmaps instead of spreading their efforts into other areas where they could lose focus.

/Robert

I has read the About Matrix
But I don't get What is the Matrix.
But I still want to join the Matrix team. :)

I has read the About Matrix
But I don't get What is the Matrix.
But I still want to join the Matrix team. :)

So it's merely a writable-CD-on-a-chip. Maybe they will develop a rewritable version someday :-)

/R