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Buckminsterfullerene Strikes Again - Nanotube RAM
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?"
Something else I can stare longingly at on newegg while knowing full well i'll have to sell my wife and 2 pints of plasma to actually buy it...
well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
Here's a little details that pretty much summarize the docs:
How it works. Nantero's memory chips consist of billions of nanotubes, each a few hundred nanometres long, suspended from a silicon wafer. ... This means that a group of a few dozen nanotubes can act as a memory element, storing a single bit (either a one or a zero) of the binary code that computers use to operate. If the connection between the wafers is live at a particular point, the bit represented is a one. If not, it is a zero.
Speed. Nantero's new memory can read or write a bit in as little as half a nanosecond.
Availability. At the moment, Nantero has only a working prototype. But the firm aims to have memories on the market within a year.
Hurdles. The main difficulty faced by others who have tried to go down the buckytube route is getting the tubes to align with each other when they are hung from the first wafer. Until now, the approach has been to try to grow all of the tubes in the correct orientation to start with. But Nantero's founders came up with a simpler, if less elegant, solution. They use established lithographic techniques to get rid of tubes that are pointing in the wrong direction by zapping them with an electron beam. That leaves only those that are hanging down towards the opposite wafer.
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Now, I'm not there, not involved with the company at all, but I'm going to venture a guess and say that maybe, just maybe, they won't have the nanotubes exposed and just lying around? Maybe, just maybe, the nanotube wafers will be, oh I dunno, enclosed in something? Cause where a flash would hurt it, I imagine a well-placed finger would hurt them too.
Just a thought.
For those who are interested, the Nantero's technology is based on earlier work in the lab of Charles M. Lieber. The original paper was published in the journal Science. Rueckes et al, Science, Vol 289, P. 94. Rueckes went on to found Nantero.
The original experiment worked as follows:
The original experiment was done with bundles of carbon nanotubes. In principle, the concept should work at much higher densities for single nanotubes, but the technology still has hurdles to cross. Currently, the tubes conduct because ropes of tubes are likely to contain both semiconductor type and metal type tubes. Since metal type tubes are fantastic conductors, having even a few of them in a rope will allow a device to work. However, when one crosses the threshold to single nanotubes, the device will only work if the tubes are metal type. Hence, an important problem will be finding a way to produce only metal type single walled nanotubes. Currently, carbon nanotubes are produced in a mixture of semiconductor type and metal type nanotubes. It's difficult to control that property because it depends sensitively on the way the sp2 bonds on the nanotube sidewall line up, something that no one yet knows how to control.
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.
First, I have to confess that I am a Materials Engineer and not some ubergeek with a CSE degree.
But it's a definite fact that technological advances are only made possible with the precedence of metallurgical advances.
Silicon wafers today wouldn't exist without the metallurgical backing to create high purity Silicon, Aluminum, and so on.
The point being that with the discovery of the buckey ball, we are entering a new age of history. We're not there, but we're working on it really hard.
Before you toss me out as flamebait consider that each primary age of human civilization is named as a metallurgical Age: Bronze, Iron, Steel. Some might argue that we are in the Silicon Age right now. However, the impact of Silicon is not as ubiquitious as the impact of the discovery of Bronze, Iron, or Steel.
But the Buckey Ball is going to be similar in the scope of impact as Steel or Iron. Why?
- Structural Materials
- Electronics
- Optics
- Aerospace
It's a FUNDAMENTALLY new material product available for the engineers to play with.