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Buckminsterfullerene Strikes Again - Nanotube RAM

Posted by timothy on from the when-it's-in-my-pocket-and-in-retail-stores dept.

putaro writes "Nanotube based RAM, under development by Nantero, promises to deliver densities of over 1 terabit per cm^2, is non-volatile and faster than current DRAM. The Economist has a nice story. Forget about just kicking DRAM's and FLASH's butt, is this finally the end of magnetic storage as well?"

3 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Re:too bad by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    you can't upgrade the memory speed beyond what your entire CPU supports -- you have to upgrade your entire CPU. Which means AMD has to redesign the CPU to take advantage of faster (or different types of) memory. And Opterons aren't that cheap yet...

    Not so. The opteron has 3 hypertransport busses which can be connected to alternate memory controllers - the onboard one is then disabled. What I want to know is whether AMD plans to maintain separate part numbers for each speed/controller combo, or if they're just going to band them, with higher clocked Opterons getting faster memory.

    --
    "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
  2. Great for security, too! by Jade+E.+2 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Replacing SDRAM (or RAMBUS or whatever) with some type of NVRAM will require a whole new approach to security. Otherwise, when you go home at night, what's to stop me from booting your computer (off a CD or floppy if it's reasonably secure), or rebooting it if you left it running but locked, and running an app that allocates a couple gigs of memory without initializing it then lets me browse it? Encryption keys, passwords, anything that's cached I could get. (Wouldn't care about anything stored on the disk, or other permanent media, I could get those with this method now.) Or, you could just initialize the memory on boot, but then you lose the advantages of nvram like the ability to shut down then pick right back up where you left off.

    You couldn't even track it by user at the OS level (user a has memory x and y allocated, so user b can't use that.) because I could still boot it into a different OS through a removable drive...

    Of course, you could just eliminate all caches of keys or passwords... But do you really want to have to re-enter your slashdot password everytime you hit refresh, or click on a link to the comments page, or click to read a reply?

    Maybe the solution would be to specify a certain area of RAM that would get initialized on power-up (be it a reboot or just waking up from an NVRAM suspend), and get apps to put any sensitive information in that area... Which would probably require additions to your favorite OS's API, in addition to new versions of a lot of apps...

    Just thinking 'out loud' here... Anybody else thought about this?

  3. Re:too bad by kwerle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Of course, Silicon RAM is to NanoRAM as a kumquat is to a watermelon

    No. Silicon RAM is to NanoRAM as Vacuum tubes are to Silicon. They're both there to do the same thing, it's just that nobody bothers with vacuums (except for a very few special purpose - like audiophiles) because they're old and clunky.

    The point is that you would have faster, non-volitile RAM that would fit into existing hardware.

    No. The point is that you could easily have so much RAM that it would make retrofitting it into a current system look like putting an spoiler on a model-T.

    I'd also imagine that this non-volitile RAM uses next to no power, making it a great potential drop-in replacement for laptops and other portable devices.

    Good thinking. Oh, and let's not forget you wouldn't need to spin a disk at 1000s of RPM, which uses some energy as well.

    This is not an upgrade. It is a change.