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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."
Considering how new the "nano"-technology is compared to silicon based technology, I'm impressed they even made it as far as a press release.
Jon Jungel
I wonder how thick these things are. Layering them might prove interesting, assuming they don't generate a lot of heat.
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Q
Ever heard of the FLASH hard drives? Well, think about it. 10 times faster than flash drives, no limit to the number of write operations... this has the potential to become the *ultimate* hard drive technology. Silent hard drives, which can be operated no matter the humidity conditions (7500+ RPM hard drives don't operate very well in places with high humidity and heat, i.e. coasts)...
Only one thing concerns me, tho. 2 years ago, Nantero had announced the fabrication of their nanotube memory. I was skeptical then, and I'm still a bit skeptical. What if their prototypes don't work? Will Nantero suffer the fate of so many dot-com's we all (don't) know about?
Only time will tell.
I just want to know is will this change the world in the same fundamental way that mineral oil did in the 20th?
It's an interesting fact that carbon is the key component for mineral oil.
Carbon, just like silicon, has 4 electrons in their outer orbit.
Carbon is one of the 4 components for life (C,H,O,N).
So, yes, why not?
But here's something *VERY* interesting: There has been research on nanotubes made with transition metals. As well as DNA-based nanotube-like structures.
I think this is just the beginning. This week physorg reported bioelectronical components using bacteria. Who knows what the future holds for us? of course, assumming we don't destroy ourselves before we get there.
Well, unless the server was written using memory transactions, which are starting to look like a good idea for other reasons also. If you had a transactional layer on top of your NVRAM, then you could structure things to allow crash recovery as well; then you could recover from any crash at any time.
I know you're not a native speaker, but this is a common turn of phrase which always amuses me when I see or hear it.
It really should be, "assuming we don't destroy ourselves instead of getting there." The way it's worded, I get a "Monkey's Paw" feeling where the mangled corpse of the son is coming home (in the above, its our mangled corpses reaching "the future" (cue Zappa noise)).
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Good point. It's funny, the article starts with "Will computers that require no time to boot up become a reality?" but that's kind of a stupid question. I reboot my Linux machine once every year or so, maybe a little more often if I'm installing a new kernel. But once it's up, it stays up for weeks or months at a time. The time required to boot is totally insignificant.
But the real point is, *when* I reboot a machine, I'm doing it because I need it to run from a clean slate. I don't want the previously crashed kernel and data to hang around.
I guess many people perceive boot time as an evil thing because they have to reboot their Windows PCs so damn often. Just another case of fixing the symptom and not the real problem. The real solution would be to make Windows so reliable you don't need to reboot it.
I don't think anyone is positioning this NRAM as a replacement for DRAM/SRAM. It's clearly only being compared to FLASH, so at most it's a contender for solid-state disk drive. And from the description, I would very much look forward to using it in that application.
-- *My* journal is more interesting than *yours*...