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Nanoscale Switches in Memory
Frans Faase writes "At the university of Boston, researchers are using nano-scale mechanical switches as a novel technology for building memory. These switches are extremely small, require only femtowatts of power to switch, but still can switch at speeds of 23.57 megahertz. And they are expected to become even smaller and faster and are expected to overcome the theoretical limit of 100 gigabits per square inch capacity for magnetic media."
Throughout that article they keep talking about how amazing this technology is because it's so much better than hard drives. But they never compare it to regular DRAM or Flash memory, which is probably what it would compete with in the marketplace, unless it is much cheaper to manufacture than DRAM or Flash, which seems unlikely seeing as it's based on silicon fabrication techniques.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
That certainly depends on the scale of the parts.
The closer they are to the atomic scale, the more durable they will be.
Just considder molecules and atoms.Memory built from single atoms will never wear. I think that is the whole idea.
But they will suspectible to errors.
Max M - IT's Mad Science
Or not. It's application dependent, really. Think about military/space applications like Bush's "Star Wars" program. Dense high speed memory that is RAD-hardened against cosmic rays is extremely expensive, and not totally bit-error proof. The longer the RAD-hardened electronics stays in space, the more likely that it will be damaged. The old Soviet Union equipped their most advanced fighter and bomber aircraft with tube technology because they could recover from the EMP wave originating from nuclear detonations. Both SOS (Silicon on Sapphire) and GOD (Germanium on Diamond) are expensive to manufacture, and have low manufacturing yields. These new devices will likely never see any commercial use, as the DoD will buy the patent and classify it Top Secret. Even commercial satellite use would be unlikey, because the DoD wants the capability to cripple or destroy both commercial satellites and foreign military space platforms.
I said "trolling" because your username is a ham call sign (Hi Ontario) and you were asking questions about radio. In another post you talked about millions of switches operating on femtowatts of power but then talked about milliwatts of RF power. 10 000 000 femtoWatts = 1.0 × 10^-05 milliWatts. If you are being sincere then I'm sorry that I thought you were just suckering people into nitpicking your posts.
If you guys have complained about stability, think about this. How many MILES does a hard disk platter "travel" in say, a year? let's see, 7200 revolutions per minute, times 60 minutes per hour, times 24 hours per day,... do you really think this is STABLE?
You drop it, it becomes unusable due to the precision required to align the HD heads and prevent collisions.
In contrast, MEMS (micro electro mecanical switches) only move back and forth. And only by NANOmeters. And we're talking about crystalline materials here (did you know that carbon nanotubes , for example, have a much greater endurance than diamonds? AND they're flexible).
Plus, nanoswitches, even when they can be "moved", have a limited and stable range of movement. And being non ferro-magnetic makes them immune to EM interference. If you flick a switch today, it requires exactly the same action in exactly the opposite direction to alter the information. But with a floppy disk... hey, just get it near to your stereo.
Of course, do you think scientists would be dumb enough not to add an "isolation" layer to deal with vibrations? But look, to alter these thingies we'd have to talk about vibrations in the megahertz scale.
So yes, in the future, I think these babies will be the replacement for flash memories and hard disks.
Sorry for getting off subject a bit here, but "/.'ers" are not obsessed with finding ways to fit their "ever increasing library of pr0n...," rather it is a sarchastic remark (a joke).
Anyway, no matter who you are, you have to admit there are several awesome uses of this storage capacity. Who knows, maybe the media some of us record digitally isn't illegal or perverted?
For example, my uncle happens to own an enormous amount of DVDs, CDs, records, etc.. He is a movie/song buff. He has an entire room dedicated to shelves of recordings, and he is having to use other rooms now because its full. He is starting to record these digitally (esp. the records) so that he can easily change songs without walking upstairs and browsing a HUGE room.
These days people are more willing to pin evil on others as its an easy moral-boost for oneself, wrongly accusing innocent people, and suppressing an entire society based on assumptions. Besides, maybe the law isn't perfect either (*shock*)...
Codito, ergo sum.
of course hard drives and solid state memory work so well under dusty, static-charged conditions! I think the biggest hurdle would be adopting a new technology into an well established mass commodities market. Maybe this stuff could find its way into BIOS? Good luck to them anyways.