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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.
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)"
Fantastic. Now lets get with the program and refer to this permanent, high capacity "memory" as "storage".
Still, this has great potential for delivering software and content. If it gets cheap, think about the potential for distributing movies on these as opposed to dvds.
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"
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?
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"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.
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...
Data crystals are based on holographic data storage. Holographic memory has the advantage of preserving vast amounts of data throughout the volume of the crystal, not just on the surface, plus if it's chipped or broken each piece still retains the entire holographic image. It's completely different from any data storage method used today, including this one.
For various reasons, mostly cost and implementation, holographic data storage has never materialized. You can read a little more about it at HowStuffWorks and other places. (I googled for "holographic memory data storage" and found that page at the top.)
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.
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?
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yep, a cigarette lighter sized memory stick would be about 16 gigs of data, thats about 3200 mp3s or 10 movies, not bad IMHO
"I'm not high, just stupid" --JY
Chemistry isn't nearly as black box as you make it out to be. Basic organic chem can show you how (and why) a reactive molecule will interact with another, and what the new molecule will be on a atomic level.. often predicting many of the physical properties you mentioned.
Similar rules can be applied to large repetitive molecules (Polymer Chemistry uses this type of mechanistic approach to develop new polymers fairly constantly), medium-to-large molecules (such as structure based drug design of ligands and small molecule bio inhibitors) and even very large molecules (proteins) or aggregates thereof (crystals, metals, conductors, etc).
We're still quite a ways off from being to simulate arbitrary molecules from the ground up, but we do understand a fair bit of the atomic interactions (even subatomic ones, although the QM and QFT math gets pretty heavy for anything larger than a handful of atoms which aren't in a regular pattern) and are getting a pretty solid grasp on the full set of mechanics we'd need to do such predictive simulations or derivations.
G
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.
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.