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HP, Princeton Develop New Memory Material
An anonymous reader writes "Hewlett-Packard and Princeton researchers say they've developed a hybrid material that could be used for super-compact electronic memory, making the CD, DVD and similar media seem enormous and clunky by comparison. As reported by Science Blog, 'The researchers achieved the result by discovering a previously unrecognized property of a commonly used conductive polymer plastic coating. Their memory device combines this polymer, which is inexpensive and easy to produce, with very thin-film, silicon-based electronics.'"
This is another thing that strikes me as being similiar to the battery "advances" we've had over the years that have never made it into consumer products. We've been hearing about MRAM and storage densities for years, and yet we still don't have instant-on computers. I wonder if we'll see an article about how these advances are idling just like the battery field.
You can only write to this stuff once. Real memory is rewritable, like CD-RWs -- it'd probably be better to call this Plastic ROM or something similar.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
0x0D 0x0A
Instead of burning our porn to CD or DVD, we will soon be able to burn our porn to a device using this material? Excellent.
"Sorry sir, your phone's full-up now. The memory's all been used. You'll have to get a new one".
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Lets face it. The important question to be asked here is can I burn (or write) image files to this. ;)
For backup purposes only, of course...
The trick is this new memory is write once, read many. So is there really a benefit to consumers or is this just a way to improve the profitability of the corporations even more by milking money out of the consumer whenever they wish to take pictures ala with film based photography. With the other forms of solid state memory you have the benefit of write many, read many. This along with a fairly inexpensive cost makes this a step back instead of a step forward.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
And even if it is cheap to manufacture, it will probably become a gimmick to raise the cost of a record.. Or whatever it will be called when they start selling music albums on that medium.
Fantastic. Now lets get with the program and refer to this permanent, high capacity "memory" as "storage".
So, as I understand it, this is a PROM? Burning 'fuses' sounds like an original PROM - how does this help? I suppose you could stack sheets of this on top of each other and make WORM 'cube' memory...
It seems like every week we're subjected to another story about some research lab somewhere devising a new type of memory that's harder, better, faster, stronger, fitter, happier, more productive, and what have you. This seems all wonderful, but when are we actually going to start seeing this new technology? With these all too frequent advances in memory, all going in seemingly different directions, all sponsored by different entities, doesn't it seem like it is just going to take longer for any of them to become an accepted standard, and actually put in use outside the lab?
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
I Say Storage
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Couple this with the reverse tech to salvage heat, apply it within the new optical chip.
I want a Cobalt server with all this new technology in it. Then you could slashdot me and I wouldn't even blink.
Seriously, it's pretty exciting to see some forward-thinking people coming up with ways to defeat the walls physicists said we'd hit in twenty years. Don't us we can't do something; it's only a matter of time before we prove you wrong!
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Mental note: Must corner market on Hefty Bags.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
This will be worthwhile if for nothing else than finally giving all us nerds the "data crystals" we have always wanted from various crap sci-fi...
Of course, it isn't optical and will be coated with typical electronics, but still...it will be 3D memory...multilayered 2D at least...
Keeps getting worse as I go...
You know, it's not like just because it's "write once read many", it's useless.
Imagine a new CD or DVD format where the media doesn't have to be spun. Portable music / video players could be nearly solid-state and thus more durable and compact and require far less maintenance.
I'd happily move to a new format of music where I could carry something like a pack of gum filled with "sticks" of music and pop one into a tiny player even smaller than that of the iPod....
Furthermore, this sort of thing is great for archiving data, which is the main purpose anyone talked about in the article. More data archived in less space = good, period... it takes up less bookshelves or whatever...
My only concern is that with the "fuse" design, how susceptible is it to be ruined by an errant static shock, etc?
http://www.babysmasher.com
http://www.openingbands.com
*grumble* - browsers that support multiple windows aren't all that useful.
My bad. Flame away.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
The form of this device is 3-dimensional, with roughly one gig/centimeter. It's very unlikely that the storage size of these devices would be kept at one gig. More likely would be some convenient-to-cary size, or even a dynamic size with one side designated as the interface to the reader, and the opposite end would grow for increasing sizes. That means the reader would have to be built to hold the largest size that might go in it, else be open-ended, and a user will have to insert the data end into the device. There would also likely be a shell around the data unit to protect from blunt damage. This is all presumption, but at least mechanically, if this becomes popular, we could see the return of cartridge-style packaging of games. This combined with the return of the Atari brandname for some reason makes me uneasy. :^)
Ryan Fenton
"Their memory device combines this polymer, which is inexpensive and easy to produce, with very thin-film, silicon-based electronics."
Alright, the polymer is inexpensive and easy to produce. How about the "thin-film, silicon-based electronics"? That seems to be being glossed over here...
1GB per cubic centimeter? a 5GB rod is 5x1x1 centimeters...doesn't make a dvd seem enormous to me.
Cheap dense PROM.
How does somebody invent a combination of commonly used materials?
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Why on Earth would anyone want to do that?
Why don't I just give you my phone number and address while I'm at it? Reminds me of a lot of "surveys" I see nowadays.
The issue here isn't whether or not a company can create faster disks, that's already been established, it's nothing more than subliminal marketing every time one of these businesses come out with the `next big thing'.
Consider this if you will. XCompany starts devel on say product A, at the cost of $100.00, yet the competition has either beat them to the punch, or is touting Product A also but better and perhaps at a cheaper cost. Now XCompany has got to recoup the money spent on Product A, so they `tout Devel Product B` -- which works super wonders in the kitchen! --, its all about marketing.
Why should a company flood the market when they're likely to overlap and kill off their own product line without ever selling anything. Damnit I wish I wasn't so tired I would have probably been more elegant, but I haven't had any quad grande cappucinos yet so sue me for being so spacey.
MoFscker
Although useful for write-once archiving of data, this format does not seem very useful for CD-ROM, and DVD-ROM applications. CD-ROM and DVD-ROMs can be cheaply mass-produced in pressing operations that simultaneously form all the data into the disk.
In contrast, it would appear that a copy of the data must be sequentially downloaded into each memory device -- like writing to an EPROM. I doubt this can be done very quickly without thermal damage to the device. Without a quick and cheap way of mass-producing the memory device (with the data on it) this technology is less useful for content distribution applications. It still has some potential for archiving, though.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_837803.html?m enu=news.latestheadlines
Raw material is cheap, production is cheap, but I don't know how the fuck the end product ends up costing you an arm and leg? Oh wait, I forgot to factor in the CEO's cut for coming up in a Press Relase to answer some questions about the innovation.
RRS, aka The Notorious BOB
www.notoriousbob.co.nr
I find CD-R's pretty useful, which you can only write to once. I think this idea is pretty neat..
Why would I want a 1 cubic centimeter block (with accompanying circuitry and contacts presumably making it a bit larger) that is WORM, when I can have a much thinner SmartMedia or SanDisk that is just as large digitally? The only selling point I can think of is price.
This grid of memory circuits could be made so small that, based on the test junctions the researchers made, 1 million bits of information could fit in a square millimeter of paper-thin material.
That's a 1 micron square bit size. Pfft. We can do better than that with silicon.
Ah, yes, the future will come...In 5 to 10 years.
I wouldn't have any problem with any of these, unless the "man being shot (real)" is an execution carried out by the state.
The owls are not what they seem
Making the CD, DVD and similar media seem enormous and clunky by comparison
I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I don't want my media to get much smaller. There is a limit to how small something can get before you just start losing it. Ever dropped a tablet somewhere? CDs/DVDs are a bit of an awkward size/shape though to.
I'd appreciate media that wasn't so delicate. One thing that really sucks about DVDs is the rental market. I've rented discs that are no more than 3 months old, and are scratched so badly that entire chapters are unplayable. Video cassettes can survive a bit of a drop - I can't say the same for DVDs. And let's not get started on greasy finger prints.
I'll take your storage (more storage is always welcome), but could you package it a bit more user-friendly?
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
"The device can also be used as a plastic wrap", say the researchers. "We think it brings new meaning to shrink-wrap licensing."
So could I get a TV dinner with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on the protective, plastic cover?
That would give new meaning to dinner and a movie...
I have no sig, the eyebrows seal the deal. That's right. Eyebrows.
Hey, genius, what do you think the M in ROM stands for?
Could a woman even feel something that skinny in her? I doubt it.
is that most regular consumers just wont go for small...my mother always has trouble finding her new cell phone in her PURSE!
http://www.helpfromthepro.com/customwristbands/
"similar media seem enormous and clunky by comparison"
;-)
It depends on what you're calling "similar media". My 1gig Compact Flash card is probably less volume than a 1cm square cube already, and you can write AND read to it. Already a CF card is available at 4gigs in the same space.
It may be better form-factor than CD or DVD, but that's because these formats are quite old "standards". The CD format was developed about 20 years ago, right? DVD is looking pretty dated as well. I'm sure with newer technology (blue laser?) you could get up to 40gigs or more today.
I think this would be more impressive if it were a Terrabyte in the same space. The next big standard needs to make a big leap forward to get people to toss out the old technology. Of course, whoever is designing this standard will probably get a lot of heat from the big media lawyers to never sell it to end users (wouldn't want poor owner to backup all his DVD's to a single cube)
Of course the above CF cards are quite pricy, so it's not a great analogy, but the density argument is still valid.
First of all: I have no higher schooling in either of the subjects (chemistry or math), so if the answer to my question is explained somewhere in terms that a layman in those subjects could understand, by all means, direct me to them...
Anyway, here's what I'm wondering:
How far are we from reducing the problem of designing a material with the exact properties we need for a particular use, to entering the properties we want into a computer, watch the manufacturing machine mix together the required components, and the finished material come out?
I understand that much of chemistry is mathematics, and the ways that atoms and molecules interact can be predicted, simulated, to some extent, without the ingredients physically having to be mixed together.
Is it at all possible to determine if nature's rulebook of chemistry ever can be fully understood? Can it, given enough knowledge, time and computational power, be possible, in the future, to simulate how _any_ substances will interact, and without the need for experimenting, know in advance exactly what mix of atoms are needed to get the material properties we want? Or, closest possible match?
Do you have the same concern with PROMs (there's the original fuse design...), EPROMs, EEPROMs and FlashROMs?
Depending on how cheap this memory is. You could pack in a few gigabytes. Being that your just storing phone numbers and text, that would be plenty of space. Thus, the phone would use the built-in memory like a scratch pad. when you want to erase a number, it just scratches off that address of memory as unusable and moves on to the next line. Chances are, that would never use up all that memory throughout the life of the phone. Being that technology advances and all.
Life is not for the lazy.
"Why on Earth would anyone want to do that?
Why don't I just give you my phone number and address while I'm at it?"
[snort]
There's no demographic information, it's purely a (rough) location. For example, if "located" to London, I'd be one of 8 million possible people... if this is Big Brother, he needs glasses.....
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
For a moment there, you had me going.
Life is not for the lazy.
...about things that were invented/announced/promised and which were never delivered. What's more, these complaints are RIGHT.
This is the 21st century.
Where's my nuclear powered flying family car?
Where's my personal jet pack?
Where's my silver jump suit with big pointy fins on the shoulders? I was supposed to be wearing it on my trip up to the orbital Interstellar House of Pancakes!
By now we should be able to have EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY, ALL THE TIME! They PROMISED!
I'm sick of being lied to. I say we put together a Slashdot Mobile Undercover Team (SMUT). Their job would be to attack the labs that announce these new things and demand "DELIVER, bonehead, or SHUT UP." And if they don't give a delivery date, we TAKE the widget and go play with it until it breaks. I've got me a 5 pound Craftsman ball peen Miraculous New Device Testing Tool, and I know how to use it.
"We won't get fooled again!" -- St. Daltrey
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Given even the most complete description of the molecular structure of a substance, down to the individual atoms and their positions, you can't use chemistry to predict the most basic properties of the substance.
such as:
- what color is it?
- What's the melting point? boiling point?
- is it a conductor, insulator or semiconductor?
- Is it stable at room temperature?
and so on.What you are asking about is even harder: given
a list of properties, come up with a substance
that has them, and a way to make it. That is so far beyond what chemistry can do that it is probably not even chemistry any more.
$0.02.
You every notice that every time a new technology comes out it is always claimed that it is inexpensive and easy to produce. Then when I hand over my credit card I get the feeling it was very hard to make and the materials are more rare than living Giant Squid sightings.
:P
C'mon, you know you want to tell me about R&D, profit, etc...go ahead, reply...I dare you.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
How about people stop innovating and start producing for a while instead? People have been throwing around terms like 'solid state harddisks', 'magnetic-optical drives' and 'diamond processors' for ages and longer. Time to cough up some prototypes, hmm? I'm far amazed if someone would cough up a cheapo and fast 8 GB solid state HD that works then some 350 GB magnetic HD that runs hot enough to initiate a fusion reaction.*
* = Okay, there has been SOME advancement; SATA is lovely, 64 bit processing is finally becoming a reality and USB 2.0, along with firewire, has finally brought along some decent ways to connect stuff to PCs. That said, Firewire 2.0 (?) would be very interesting if it ever comes about!
Hate me!
So, is this another Write Only Memory?
great, so we get more plastic on the planet.
but, whoa, the process for making this silicate stuff is REALLY,
EXTRA-SUPER BAD for the planet AFAIK.
Not so sure bzillions of little sticks of these would be a good idea.
Can't we find a way to genetically engineer trees to have the right cell structure to do this?
Then all you have to do is break a branch off and cut to the right length. Voila! Presto! Another memory stick!
Today on this date the ISOLINEAR data chip was created. This marked an event that rivaled the invention of the Transistor by Bell Labs in 1953.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
These guys www.ovonyx.com have had something better (but similar tech) for the last 3 years. Intel have bought into the tech and are helping develop it into commercial devices. Non-volatile, fast (SRAM speed), and multi-read/write
Ah, yes, the future will come...In 5 to 10 years
Just in time for Duke Nukem Forever to be shipped on this type of disc.
you can hold a patent on synthetics or genetically engineered stuff, but other than that, the patent is on the process of production or the use of an item. e.g. if you patent a widget and i design a version that improves/innovates/works underwater, i can patent that (but i cannot make it without a license from you for the original design)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's not so much that it's not a great analogy, it's that the analogy completely misses the point! Cramming a gigabyte into a small space is tough to do, but even tougher is to do it in a cost-effective way.
The density argument isn't even valid! Do I want a gig of music (or a movie) in a RO package for $20 or do I want a gig of R/W space for $200? Who knows? You're comparing apples and oranges! Sheesh. Good thing there aren't licensing requirments for posting messages on the Internet...yours would be revoked.
are you suggesting something like 9x4x1 proportions? ;-)
Some of you people are missing the point. First of all, CDs/DVDs are optical, and the drives are mechanical with several moving parts. This is, for intents and purposes, solid state. These new drives are going to be a *ton* faster. Second. The end device will probably start off as cartridge, only much faster than CDs. Most cartridges from as far back as the Magnavox Oddysey^2 work fine to this day...If you even look at a DVD/CD wrong and you're in skipsville (at the minimum). DVDs aren't famous for being scratch resistant. So it's read only, so are DVDs/CDs. RWs are cool, yes. But the media is more expensive, and most people don't use them when you can buy spindles of blanks. I'm sure these will come in "burnable" form sooner or later too. Back to the solid state issue: future cartridge formats may take advantage of newer technology, and build them into the discs (no more new drives after this)
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
"IT'S A FAAAAAAAAAAAKE!"
You must think in Russian.
Why don't storage companies fix DVDs first? CDs were originally promoted with 100 year archival lifetime. Now they're revealed to be more like 10, minus accidental scratches to the "label", the unprotected metal face into which the data is burned. DVDs are supposed to have 2 data faces, with 2 layers per face, at 4.7GB on each of the 4 layers (as per the DVD media spec). They still have just 4.7GB per disc, rather than 18.8GB.
If they glued 2 DVD-Rs together, and/or embedded the extra semitransparent layers in the clear acrylic, they'd double or quadruple the capacity to compete with current rewritable HD capaticies (per $ and m^3, if not per drive). And burying the fragile data layers would offer much longer archival lifetimes. And of course, they'd get to sell us a new line of incompatible drives! Bring it on!
--
make install -not war
"So, is this another Write Only Memory?"
No, WOM cannot be read back even once. Write Only means No Read. I.e., it's a gag.
WORM is write once, read many. This is WORM, like CD-R.
Already the price of duplicating DVDs is lower than that for VHS tapes.
I also wonder about the cost per byte for this new memory format. Mass produced DVDs cost under 0.10 per gigabyte. I have a hard time seeing how they can fabricate tens of billions of memory bit locations in the Si-PEDOT material for this price point.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The device could be very small because it would not involve moving parts such as the laser and motor drive required by CDs.
From what a professor told me once, CDs didn't have to be created the way they are. They could've been made square so that, instead of the CD spinning in the tray, the laser beam would be bent by a prism (or through other means). This would make CD technology much faster and less susceptible to errors, etc.
Why did they make CDs round? Because they were first used for audio, so they were made to look like records. A silly marketing strategy screwed us out of a much better implementation of the same technology!
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
'The researchers achieved the result by discovering a previously unrecognized property of a commonly used conductive polymer plastic coating. Their memory device combines this polymer, which is inexpensive and easy to produce, with very thin-film, silicon-based electronics.'"
Memory codename: MacGyver
If they hope to make a 3D media storage device, alright. Otherwise, it won't be that great in 2D (a media the shape of a CD would carry something like... 9GB?
I am NOT going to be forced to buy 'The White Album' again!!!
^^ Your worst troll ever.
Fast Page, EDO, SDRAM, DDR, Rambus...
On the non-volatile side of things, we have floppy disks, high capacity floppy disks, CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD+-R, DVD+-RW...
You know, all of the things you use were at one time some press release, years (or even decades) away from consumer availability.
Trust me, kids, back when I got my Vic-20 pretty much all of this seemed like science fiction, and like *nothing* ever actually came out.
Then I waited long enough to see research turn into the real goods.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
There are plenty of thin-film polymer memory cells already, most of them rewriteable even ... and the problem of producing lots of storage cheaply with them is that using traditional photolitography is expensive. Rolltronics.com uses web processing instead for patterning, now that is exciting stuff (although they have not gotten the feature sizes down enough for really low cost storage).
This whole article was written by (and posted on slashdot) by people who dont know anything about thin film memory.
EOM
eom
All these comments:
We'll never see it.
Yeah, will it come in my nuclear flying car?
The future...In 5-10 years.
And on and on. Do you guys all think that the tech we're using today was developed in a lab six months ago. Or is the tech we're using today stuff that was created in labs 5 years ago when you all made those same damn comments to those articles. Like copper interconects and SOI and the heads they use on modern hard drives and LCD screens.... No, not all the tech that labs create makes it to market, maybe not even most of it but some of it does. What, are the labs not supposed to announce things like this just because it might not make it to market. Its a cool idea and good science. Maybe it will make it to market and maybe it won't. Either way there isn't any reason to slam these guys for creating this and thinking big. They're in R & D; thats their fucking job.
--Greg
Does anyone have any numbers for power consumption?
With no moving parts, and needing no power to maintain the storage state, this could have very low power consumption. If so, it could have some interesting applications:
- An iPod (approx. 5x5x1 cm = 25 gig) with a battery that lasts many days, and probably no need for much normal memory, so the price would be much lower.
Presumably these would be much faster than disk drives (maybe close to memory speeds?):
- put your OS on one of these in you computer, then boot time is vastly reduced (you can hear your HD thrashing at boot time, that's why boot times have been increasing; OS sizes are larger so you have to load more stuff into memory on boot).
Normally I'd have more examples, but my brain isn't working well today.
1. id like to fake shooting you
2. then do it for real.
3. then say god damn it when you blood runs on my clothing.
4. then someone saying for your blood mess, the fuckers fucking fucked.
5. then expose your woman's breasts for licking. shell like it because you suck.
6. then have sex with your woman. and unload on her abdomen.
"Looks like I'm going to have to buy the white album again"
OLED have a lot of problems: this is why OLED displays are not here yet.
I am not an expert of the field, but some time ago I have found this report (in PDF)
Look at page 2 (second half) for see such problems.
Look also at page 16: OLED aren't expected to catch LCD performance until 2007
The article is a bit old, and i don't know if something is changed.
As a theoretical chemist I do it (or rather try to do it) all the time.
All we need to fully understand (or simulate) properties of a substance is to solve its Schroedinger equation. The problem is non-trivial, though. The problem is hard already for simple molecules and any multi-electron systems must be solved in an approximate way. The approximations works worse and worse with the increasing size of the system. We can solve exactly only hydrogen atom. Light atoms can be solved approximately with very good accuracy, the same is with simple molecules. However, their interactions (which are important in solid state) or larger molcules are computationally much more demanding. Good methods usually scale as N^6 or higher and we quickly come to the limit of the computing power. If we do not need very good accuracy and are interested in qualitative or semi-quantitive properties, there are some good methods but they are way below the experiment. However, it is possible to predict some of the properties or design the molecules to be better suited to some problem and this is being done.
Matching experimental accuracy for non-trivial moleculs, especially in spectroscopy, will require either better methods or power of quantum computers or both.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
...it looks like I'll have to buy the White Album again.
B.
eom
What happens when you destroy material thru heat in a closed container with no out gasing of the plastic fuse (albeit a small amount).
What about inner laminate trapped gas pockets distorting/destroying packaging inner infra-structure over time ?
I think HP/Princeton have created a neat lab experiment.
Isnt trapping gases in a closed container the theory behind hand grenades ?