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Carbon Nanotube Memory on the Way
Cyberherbalist writes "Nantero, a nanotechnology company, is expecting prototypes of products using NRAM technology (nanotube-based, non-volatile random access memory) to be available in 2006. In the article at nature.com, it says that 'the company has succeeded in making circular wafers, 13 centimetres in diameter, that hold 10 gigabits of data.' And they are ten times faster than 'flash' memory."
It's a prototype for Christ's sake....it'll get smaller with time. You ever see a string of iron core memory? That stuff was big too, but it got smaller.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
I am an old timer, been through the tube age, then on to transistors with tubes, then transistors then the first chips and on and on... All new technologies have a rough start, I know we will soon have solid state memory that is cheap, reliable and non-volatilse that will allow our computers to be instant on instead of loading all of the crap we now have to. Do prototypes work to begin with, hell no, but give it all a chance. A techno nerd before they were words... Rod
Why would you do that?
Current DRAM chips were there years ago: current DRAM chips are around 1Gbit per square centimeter. On a ~5" wafer, this means ~40 potentially working chips per wafer and 40Gbits/wafer, four times as much.
And as far as downtime reduction goes, NRAM would be no good unless the server has time to suspend-to-RAM... so you would still need an UPS or ultra-capacitors to cover this.