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."

Comments

Wafer?

[slashflood]

A 13 centimeter wafer that can hold 1.25 gigabyte of data? That's not impressive.

Re:Wafer?

[Poromenos1]

Indeed, but if I had a server I'd want one of these for RAM.

Re:Wafer?

[SonicBurst]

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.

Re:Wafer?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Wafer?

[alexatrit]

And how thick is a wafer, exactly? compared to say, a disk platter? If they attain the access time mentioned in TFA, it is rather impressive. High-capacity, fast, thin, and preferably shiny things are always impressive.

Re:Wafer?

[photon317]

For one, it's first-gen stuff. It will likely gain density quickly in the future. Also, don't forget this is basically NVRAM: way faster than a hard-drive, and way more permanent than DRAM. It fills a unique niche and cannot directly be compared to or replace either of the two. (Well, it could replace hard drives, if it shrunk enough). The day is coming (slowly) when the primary storage on any computer system will probably be some sort of nonvolatile solid-state device. Hard drives with spindles will be for bulk data (music, movies, documents), while the OS goes on the nonvolatile ram which is neccesarily much smaller in size, but more reliable and faster to access. You can do things that way now under Windows or Linux by buying a 1-4 GB-ish solid state flash disk for your root disk (or C: drive) and then putting in a large normal hard drive for all your bulk data, but current SSD technology is overpriced and suffers from various little problems, both of which make it impractical for mass deployment even if the OS vendors put more thought into supporting the setup.

Re:Wafer?

[SteveAyre]

Wafers are normally cut up into many smaller chips, so it could be a 13 inch wafer holding n 10gb chips. Not sure whether that's the case or not.

It's probably also a prototype and the size'll shrink more soon.

Re:Wafer?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're overlooking the retro market. Can't you just see it? 2007: Apple announces the iWalk, a moderately bulky portable player that holds -- get this -- 90 minutes of music! It'll be cool, though, since it will be in rainbow colors (so 70's) and it will be hip since it features Carbon Nanotube Memory. (Of course, /. will totally rave about it when it comes out.)

Re:Wafer?

[qray]

I wonder how thick these things are. Layering them might prove interesting, assuming they don't generate a lot of heat.
--
Q

Re:Wafer?

[elgatozorbas]

Indeed, but if I had a server I'd want one of these for RAM.

That would make you a 100% technology elitist. If I, for one, would build a server, I would make it out of small, cheap, proven reliable, available components that I know rather than (presumably) expensive, large, unavailable non-field-tested new technology for which the only incentive to buy them would be they are 'cool'...

Re:Wafer?

[aug24]

Ah... ferrite core. I remember being shown a 4 inch square of that stuff that held... a kilobit. Yes, that's right, 256 bytes filling the size of your hand. 32 copper wires across and down, with a little lump of black ferrite core at each junction, like the ugliest jewellery you ever saw.

When they got bugs in the system, they could correct the memory by hand with a magnet...

Ah, those were the completely off-topic days.

Justin.

Re:Wafer?

[InvalidError]

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.

Re:Wafer?

[Laaserboy]

For one, it's first-gen stuff. It will likely gain density quickly in the future.

It may gain density, but gain little in reliability. I have a Ph.D. in solid state physics, so I should respond. The carbon nanotubes bend to make connect with an electrode, so something moves. This is usually a bad sign for long-term reliability. Ask telecom technicians if they would like to replace their solid state transistor-based switches with moving switches. Their answer will be that these moving parts wore out.

This memory might not improve to the point that it becomes more reliable than your present NVRAM.

It is very easy for a scientist to produce one working device in the lab. We call these hero devices. The rest of the world does not know this. When engineers get ahold of these claims, though, they tear them up, since the process might not be cheap, reliable or scaleable.

So yes, it might get better, but I wonder if this group and the related scientist have invented new physics. Have they fundamentally changed the way mechanical switches make contact, the way electrons move and are held in capacitors, and the way domains set up in magnetic memory? I think not. I think this is a step backwards towards old mechanical swithces made smaller and reliable memory made unreliable.

Re:Wafer?

[robj]

And as far as downtime reduction goes, NRAM would be no good unless the server has time to suspend-to-RAM...

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.

Re:Wafer?

[Jozer99]

Especially considering RAM chips have an area of roughly 1 square centimeter, or a capacity of about 10 MebiBYTES each. Thats 1993 capacities all over. Also, it isn't much good for RAM, because 1.2 GB is a 13 CM diameter hunk, and it is ONLY 10 times faster than flash. That sounds nice, until you realize 667 MHz DDR2 ram is like 234239523 times (not real number, don't flame me) as fast as Flash. Hard drives are typically about 10 times as fast as flash, so there is a better compairison. Its not that I'm again Nanoram, I'm not, but its certainly not ready for mainstream computing yet. Maybe cellphones or pdas for now.

Re:Wafer?

[ranson]

I remember being shown a 4 inch square of that stuff that held... a kilobit. Yes, that's right, 256 bytes filling the size of your hand.

Actually, no, that's wrong. Last I checked, a kilobit is 128 bytes...

Re:Wafer?

[Just Some Guy]

The carbon nanotubes bend to make connect with an electrode, so something moves. This is usually a bad sign for long-term reliability.

I'm not a materials researcher, but I could imagine reasons why macroscopic phenomena like "wearing out" don't apply to nanomaterials. It seems at least remotely possible that these nanotubes are small enough that their mechanism of movement is completely understood, and there aren't any nonreversible reactions taking place.

Re:Wafer?

[sd_diamond]

A 13 centimeter wafer that can hold 1.25 gigabyte of data? That's not impressive.

That's probably why they call it a prototype. A fragile wood-and-fabric contraption that can carry only one man and fly less than 100 feet? That's not impressive.

What is impressive about it is that it is non-volatile and faster than flash memory. If the storage density can be upped by two orders of magnitude, it will be a serious competitor for platter-based hard drives. I have long felt that the distinction between "temporary" storage (RAM) and "permanent" storage (HDD) will eventually be wiped away. Maybe this is the first step in that direction.

Re:Wafer?

[drmerope]

Haha just a prototype, it will get smaller? Think again. We're not talking about lithography here. The nanotube structures are what they are. Density improvements will come only if they actually figure out how to make transistors and the like at the nanoscale level. Right now, they have effective bond out to traditional silicon technology for those functions. That process is costly in terms of area.

Mind you these densities are only been achieved in small quantities in labs. If we compare to traditional approaches, small quantities in labs are already being made with traditional silicon that have just as small if not smaller feature sizes.

So a better question is: "why bother"

Silicon/Lithography approaches are not within a factor of two of what is believed to be achievable with carbon nanotubes. Meanwhile carbon nanotubes have very low yield and very poor device reliability.

The reason the first nanotube application is shaping up to be memory is because that is only field in which we have well-developed ideas on dealing with these defects.

In closing: had this field matured 10 years ago, it would have been extremely important. Now it does not have much to offer. No one thought silicon would get to the nanoscale back then. It has.

Re:Wafer?

[fossa]

Indeed. I am a materials researcher (a very young and uneducated one however), and "movement" may have several definitions... in a paperclip for example, bending it back and forth inches crystal planes over one another until dislocations pile up and the whole thing is too brittle to bend anymore (planes don't slide well through dislocations). In a ceramic, flexure causes intrinsic pores and cracks to propagate until a large fracture forms. In a ferroelectric, ions move back and forth from their rest position under an applied field to store charge. In everything, atoms and ions diffuse over time leading to likely degradation of properties. I wouldn't really consider diffusion or ion polarization "movement", but in the case of a ferroelectric you are repeatedly straining the crystal in each charge/discharge cycle even if nothing is "moving".

In a metal (and other materials), there are both elastic strain: reversible stretching of bonds between atoms, and plastic strain: irreversible crystal planes inching and sliding over one another. (side note: metals are not as "strong" as ceramics in that a ceramic strains less under a given stress, but metals enter the energy absorbing plastic strain region while ceramics undergo brittle failure). If the movement is entirely elastic, then it's possible that diffusion is the only potential killer, or crack propagation; crack kills. I don't think a single walled perfect carbon nanotube could even strain plastically nor fail from crack propagation, but multi-walled tubes could strain plastically I imagine, and I don't think there are perfect (crack free) nanotubes.

Re:Wafer?

[Just Some Guy]

Actually, no, that's wrong. Last I checked, a kilobit is 128 bytes...

...when a byte is 8 bits. This is not always the case. Even modern parity memory stores 9 bits per byte (well, 36 bits per word), even if only 8 of those virtual bits are visible to the user.

It doesn't seem completely impossible that a machine old enough to use core memory might have also had 4-bit bytes, giving 256 bytes per kilobit (yes, kilo and not kibi - you can't make me say it).

Re:Wafer?

[Anthony]

No. But it does come with Albatross.

Re:Wafer?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a prototype for Christ's sake....it'll get smaller with time.

That's what she said.

Re:Wafer?

[Bloater]

It may gain density, but gain little in reliability. I have a Ph.D. in solid state physics, so I should respond. The carbon nanotubes bend to make connect with an electrode, so something moves. This is usually a bad sign for long-term reliability. Ask telecom technicians if they would like to replace their solid state transistor-based switches with moving switches. Their answer will be that these moving parts wore out.

A mechanical moving switch (which is the type of switch I imagined you were talking about) has problems of shear forces on the contacts wearing them down rapidly until they no longer contact. Or other forces deforming whatever is used to form the fulcrum. Nanotubes are held together by covalent bonds and (importantly) free electrons spread over the bonds like a benzene ring. Even long straight chain hydrocarbons don't spontaneously crack - and they bend and flex many more times a second than a carbon nanotube will in an electric field. The only problem then is the contact that it meets where it is probably held in place by Van-der-Waals forces. The nanotube will pull on the contact until the Van-der-Waals force is broken (it will break *way* before the covalent bonds in the nanotube) - but the forces binding some of the surface atoms of the contact could break first or at about the same time. There are very hard conducting surfaces that can be made and these will probably not fail for many years. I would not be suprised if they have or can make a device that is reliable enough for nearly any purpose, and certainly reliable enough for consumer and office electronics and short term (few years) space missions.

Re:Wafer?

[ColdGrits]

Only you CAN'T pick up where you left off, because your CPU(s) would not have a record of their state when the power went, and thus would not be able to continue from where they left off - they would need to be initialised. And thus there would be no way of recovering. And thus all your data, programs, viruses etc in memory would be irrelevant.

So you would have spent a fortune of a small amount of memory, and would not benefit in the slightest.

Re:Wafer?

[qbwiz]

Each bundle of nanotubes in this switch uses more than one nanotube (AFAIK). It's possible that the nanotubes could slide along each other and break their bonds, breaking the circuit.

Re:Wafer?

[HeroreV]

13 centimeters is only about 5 inches across, and that's plenty small enough to fit in a desktop PC or a laptop.

Re:Wafer?

[Kaenneth]

I believe it's traditionally called a 'nibble'

Re:Wafer?

[Bloater]

Yeah, although, looking at the flash intro, it says "Unlimited Lifetime". Which would suggest that it is pretty reliable, or at least that the life is not related to the number of times it switches as it is with flash.

Re:Wafer?

[slashflood]

Re:Wafer? (Score:2)
by Anthony (4077) *

Your /. id is really 4077? I always thought that those comments are extremely insightful! :-)

Re:Wafer?

[Entropy]

10 MebiBYTES each.

I know that this is surely off topic, but I can't restrain myself.

You're actually the first person I've seen really _use_ this "term" in a sentence. I heard of it a while back, and cringed. But I cringed again seeing it actually used ... come on! This is such a blatantly godawfull crapulescent term .. vomitous, disgusting, vile. It's like an incarnation of Barney haunting a word, only worse.

"Mebi" can kiss my ass.
Thank you for listening to my rant.
Now back to your regular /.

Re:Wafer?

[Jozer99]

Well, "mega" is pretty damn incorrect. Mega is the prefix meaning 1000x1000. It is commonly used in computers to mean either 1000x1000 or 1024x1024. This often leads to confusion, as with harddrives, ect... Someone decided to do something besides bitching about it and invented a new term. Better for everyone involved. Deal with it.

Re:Wafer?

[Entropy]

Knowing what a word stands for, and liking the word or common (thank heavens NOT the case here) usage of it, are two separate issues.

But thanks for the dunsel third grade math lesson ..

But here is a lesson in English language. If you hear someone say "mega", where YOU would say "mebi", does that not still lead to confusion? So not only did whoever invented this term make up something sounding ridiculously queer, they did not succeed in their plan to end confusion.

Re:Wafer?

[Jozer99]

If everyone says "nuculur" when they should say "nuclear", and you do it too, does it make you less of a blowhard? No it doesn't.

Re:Wafer?

[Entropy]

Right! Because "nuculur" is allready the popular usage ..

Oh ... wait ... it isn't, it it?

I don't think you get language at all. "Mebi" grates on the ear to most people, which is why so many resist it. It sounds downright stupid. Painful, even. Like someone dragging a cheesegrader over your dick's head.

You go ahead and use it all you'd like; I ain't going to stop you by force or nothing.

But nothing will stop me from pointing and laughing, either..

Re:Wafer?

[aug24]

No, a nybble is four bits. Half a byte you see. Top gag ;-)

J.

Re:Wafer?

[HiThere]

4-bit bytes never happened...even counting 1 byte == 1 character (false!). IIRC, baudot used 5-bit characters, morse used variable bit characters, and Conteniental Code used ternary notation variable bit length characters.

But nobody used 4-bit characters. (4 bits == 16 combinations. Won't work.)

Besides, IBM *invented* the term byte for their 360 series computers (s.a. EBCDIC), and specified it as 8 bits.

Re:Wafer?

[Fujisawa Sensei]

It may gain density, but gain little in reliability. I have a Ph.D. in solid state physics, so I should respond. The carbon nanotubes bend to make connect with an electrode, so something moves. This is usually a bad sign for long-term reliability. Ask telecom technicians if they would like to replace their solid state transistor-based switches with moving switches. Their answer will be that these moving parts wore out.

The question is what is the wear rate and meantime between failures of the nanotube?

What next?

[Anonymous Coward]

What next, an optical laptop?

Transistor

[mysqlrocks]

He says they still have to check that the chips can be reliably produced on a large scale

When the transistor replaced vacuum tubes it only became economically viable when it was produced on a large scale.

wow!!

[Lucractius]

It looks like they have a fnatastic new use for it too
these guys [ http://atomchip.com/_wsn/page4.html ] would love it ! it sounds like the perfect complementary technology to their unique advancement of computing!

Seriously, this nanotech stuff kicks ass, if it doesnt have the same write burn flash memory has, then this stuff would make solid state storage possible and FAST :D no more noisy hard drive... Perfect. No more worrying about over using your iPod Nano, changing your songs to often. All those nagging hassles GONE :D

Re:wow!!

[io333]

That atom chip corporation is a hoax

7 gigaherz 64 bit processor, 2 terabytes flash hard drive in a laptop? sure...

Re:wow!!

[Lucractius]

Yes it is. I know that. I was using exessive hyperbole in that part to point it out it was a joke, with all my exclamation marks. Its Obvious! isnt it! That theyve just stuck bits onto a regular laptop! Totaly Fake!

Re:wow!!

[io333]

I thought it was a joke, but I wasn't sure. I guess the mods didn't get the joke either, as you got modded up informative (!)

Re:wow!!

[Tony Hoyle]

I was prepared to believe it until I saw the audio jack labeled as 'Removable NvIOpRAM' (http://atomchip.com/_wsn/page3.html).. that is just such an obvious joke (didn't see the photoshopped system properties screenshot until much later.. 1TB? Windows XP can't address 1TB...)

Re:wow!!

[Lucractius]

i just hope someone gets his presentation at the expo next year on video ( if he even shows! )

I want to see the stuned audience, or the laughter.

Dvorak is gonna run em down and check it, but i doubt hell get em on tape :P

Hype?

[mothlos]

Is there anything you can't do with carbon nanotubes?

So far I have heard that they will be the next steel, the next silicon, the next communication line, the next display medium, the next fabric, the next medicinal treatment. I just want to know is will this change the world in the same fundamental way that mineral oil did in the 20th?

Re:Hype?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if you saw this one? : Defective carbon nanotubes

Re:Hype?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to know is will this change the world in the same fundamental way that mineral oil did in the 20th?

Or the way snake oil did in the 19th?

Re:Hype?

[redcone]

don't forget carbon nanotubes are the predicted best choice for cables in a space elevator---

Re:Hype?

[Spy der Mann]

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.

Re:Hype?

[Itchy Rich]

Is there anything you can't do with carbon nanotubes?

Divorce them. It's totally impossible. I've tried.

Re:Hype?

[Thing 1]

Who knows what the future holds for us? of course, assumming we don't destroy ourselves before we get there.

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)).

Re:Hype?

[SharpFang]

Connect them into a string longer than an inch or so, of durablity comparable with cotton.
At least nobody succeeded so far.

Re:Hype?

[njh]

"Carbon is one of the 4 components for life (C,H,O,N)."

You mean apart from phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, chlorine, iron, cobalt, chromium, copper, iodine, manganese, selenium, zinc, and molybdenum. And probably a few more we don't understand.

Re:Hype?

[psycho]

>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.

If you pride yourself on being one, perhaps you could try reading up on when "its" is appropriate, and when "it's" is. It's not "its our mangled corpses", it's "it's." It's not too difficult, especially for the native speaker that you purport to be.

Short lesson:
its = of or belonging to sth.
it's = it is

Hope this helps,
-ram

Re:Hype?

[Thing 1]

What's "sth"?

Your tone seems demeaning. Mine wasn't, it was amused. You're highlighting a typing error (these things just happen); I'm pointing out a thinking issue (acknowledging/understanding it can make the speaker/writer better).

But yeah, thanks for your attempt at irony which is every more ironful because of your typo.

(My mentioning "native speaker" was only because I've seen said poster discussing not being a native speaker, and appreciating any help.)

Re:Hype?

[psycho]

Huh. I wasn't factoring your illiteracy into my reply. Sorry. Ever glanced at a dictionary? I recommend the OED.
"sth." is a standard abbreviation for "something."
Does this mean you'll "forget" the ketchup on my next order?

Re:Hype?

[psycho]

BTW, what the fuck is "ironful"? Try ironic. Jesus what a fucktard.

Yes, but...

[wootest]

...does it scratch easily?

"On The Way"

[LesPaul75]

They should call it DNFRAM, because I heard that each DIMM will come bundled with Duke Nuke-em Forever. I also heard that their first major customer was the Phantom game console.

And ferromagnetic RAM (FRAM) technology shows promise for making faster non-volatile components: it uses the orientation of crystal atoms to store data.

But both flash and FRAM chips wear out over time and lose the ability to store information. FRAM chips, adds Schmergel, cannot be made as small as NRAM ones.

How long have people been announcing that a new, non-volatile, and/or huge-capacity, and/or incredibly fast memory technology is on the way, and soon to be released, and just going through the very last stages of entering mass production? Has even one of them made it to store shelves? The last real revolution in storage technology that I know of, that actually went anywhere, was "spintronics." And that has turned out to be practical only in hard drives, even though it was claimed by some that it would completely revolutionize memory in general.

Re:"On The Way"

[LiquidCoooled]

Hey, innovation comes along.

I remember hearing about Perpendicular drives. You can buy them now.

(Ok, I know its not a huge advance, but I like the marketting, so its mentioned here)

Re:"On The Way"

[Epistax]

As with what LiquidCoooled said, we also have MRAM now working. Advances come dude.

Re:"On The Way"

[LesPaul75]

But that's just it... it's "working." There's a big gap between "working" and "shipping." They have quantum computers "working," but try finding one at Fry's. Where can I buy some MRAM? I'd love to have a computer that doesn't need to shut-down or reset or hibernate. Or how about FRAM? Or NRAM?

Progress is great, but these companies are so eager to hype their technology that they jump the gun. And then they find out a month later that there's a huge problem with acually mass producing them. Or, they find out that the technology isn't practical for one reason or another. That's why your PC still has a hard drive and DRAM, just like it did in 1985.

I hope I'm wrong and that I get 2GB of NRAM for Christmas this year. But I ain't holding my breath. :)

More nano hype.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember 'holographic' storage that was going ti give TB's in something the size of a sugar cube, or all the other similar technologies touted over the last 10 years. They all came to nothing, we are still stuck with slow HDD's and flash technology. 10 years from now things will be much the same, we will have even bigger, marginally fast HDD's.

Re:More nano hype.

[amliebsch]

Actually, they're still mving forward on holographic storage.

Recent story

Re:More nano hype.

[ArbitraryConstant]

That's bee "10 years away" for as long as I can remember. It'll probably replace optical drives one of these days, but optical drives have certain disadvantages that you can't really do anything about. Primary storage will probably always be something else.

Re:More nano hype.

[Fujisawa Sensei]

I'm sure it will be ready when my quantum computer is.

Perhaps RAM isn't the ideal application...

[Spy der Mann]

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.

Re:Perhaps RAM isn't the ideal application...

[rodwthompson]

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

Re:Perhaps RAM isn't the ideal application...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a link to news from year 2003 where they accounced it:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3838

Re:Perhaps RAM isn't the ideal application...

[Anthony]

I agree with your perspective. The only really big hiccups I recall where prototypes were talked about in the popular press as the next big thing were "silicon was too slow and was going to be replaced by GaAs by the mid 80's" and "Bubble Memory".

Some things also take longer than expected to become economical. I saw Vertical Density recording in floppy diskettes at a Hitachi exhibition in Tokyo in 1983. IIRC, they had >3MB in 3.5in and >8MB in 5.25in. I can't remmeber if there were hard drives there or not.

Re:Perhaps RAM isn't the ideal application...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

There have been and still are a lot of "instant on" computers. The problem is that people expect more of their computers at an economical cost, as such, the idea of instant on gets thrown out, though, IMO, sleep and standby gets most of the functionality right there, you get a computer that's on and functional in a couple seconds and the computer takes very little power in standby/sleep.

Not viable

[8086ed]

He didn't say viable, he said reliable. There's a big difference. If they can't be produced reliably, why would they waste their time mass producing them.

Re:Not viable

[stripes]

If they can't be produced reliably, why would they waste their time mass producing them.

Depends on how they are unreliable. If say 75% of the tubes one a wafer can't be used to store data, but the ones that do work keep working you can map out the bad ones much like you do with bad disk blocks. On the other hand if they come off the line fine but 75% of them die after a month or two, well, there isn't much use for them.

And of corse you need to calculate the cost per bit after the mapping overhead, and make sure that is still cheap enough to be useful.

Re:Not viable

[Jace of Fuse!]

And of corse you need to calculate the cost per bit after the mapping overhead, and make sure that is still cheap enough to be useful.

If reliable, even though expensive, it will certainly be useful. 10 gigs of fast non-volatile random access memory has many uses, even if very expensive. Those uses just might be niche markets, but they exist just the same.

It's a bad idea to pick up where you left off

[GoClick]

Yes except often we WANT to force a restart when the power button no longer works. I've got a Dell PowerEdge 800 here that from time to time will not reboot via holding the power button down. That means unplugging it.

Battery backups are a LOT cheaper for now that exotic stateful memory solutions. You can have your speed and keep it too. Battery backups aren't very expensive.

Even a crummy laptop can standby for several days (my crummy 2002 Toshiba $1000 unit lasts 5 days)

Re:It's a bad idea to pick up where you left off

[Takumi2501]

It could also be a problem if you ever got a virus. Even booting off a clean disk wouldn't be a guarantee.

Of course, if there were some way to manually reset the memory, that'd be alright.

Re:It's a bad idea to pick up where you left off

[hyc]

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.

Re:It's a bad idea to pick up where you left off

[ZenShadow]

Ah, but how much more often would you turn off your desktop if it were guaranteed to be as you left it when you turned it back on -- and there was no delay in getting to that state?

Think of the power savings if computers only had to be on when we were actually *used* them... :-)

--S

Re:It's a bad idea to pick up where you left off

[cvas]

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.

Notebooks

Re:It's a bad idea to pick up where you left off

[X0563511]

My laptop does that occasionally, but they handily put one of those "reset" pen-buttons on the bottom (like you see on calculators).

Simply wire that kind of circuit to trip a relay that writes 0s to the ram and you're golden.

Re:It's a bad idea to pick up where you left off

[hyc]

And your point is?

My notebook will "suspend to RAM" and "suspend to disk" so again, assuming nothing has flaked out, I don't need to reboot it either. Currently my uptime on the notebook is about 12 days; I shut it down a while ago before heading thru an airport, otherwise it's always ready to use.

Re:It's a bad idea to pick up where you left off

[cvas]

In both of your examples, you have exceptions. Oh, I never need to reboot my computers, except when...

So you, who is championing OSes and techniques to not require rebooting, still has to shutdown/reboot at times. Now I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard for you to imagine some situations where people who aren't you might think faster boot times is a good thing.

And ten times as yummy!

[goombah99]

I wonder if some bacteria will evolve the ability to eat this stuff. it is carbon after all. One might argue that they don't eat diamonds either (or maybe they do just slowly). But it's a different material and carbon based instead of silicon. Bacteria have evolved to eat other novel man made structures (e.g. nylon). In fact it's the novelty that makes it attractive to a bacteria since it will be a food source it has no competition for. mmmm.....nanotubes.

Re:And ten times as yummy!

[Dolda2000]

Speaking of which, shouldn't it be possible to build nanotubes out of silicon instead of carbon? I'm no nanotechnician, so I don't know if it would have any technical advantages or disadvantages, but I'm pretty sure that it's easier to get large amounts of silicon for production.

13 centimeters diameter??? 10 Gigabits????

[barfy]

Ok, holy freakin crap, but this thing is HUGE... This is bigger than most hard drives , and it holds ONE gigaBYTE of data . You are NOT fooling me with your non-standard measurements. I would have expected a bit better from "NANO" technology.

This is not going to replace ANYTHING with these dimensions... I can get an Ipod NANO with 4 GB of space, and I get a screen, a click wheel, audio processor, and a battery in less space...

That prototype is 2 years old

[hyc]

See Nantero's press releases; they announced their 10Gbit wafer in May 2003. Their partnership with LSI Logic isn't news either, that was announced June 2004. The fact that they're still signing new partnerships on a steady basis tells me this technology is not a dead-end (yet).

But why?

[StoatBringer]

Nobody will ever need more than 640k of memory!

Hacking DSLR's?

[caseybasichis]

I wonder if this type of thing would allow a DSLR to be hacked to shoot at 24fps continuously. Just a thought.

Uhm, nano technology

[Daath]

Uhm, yeah. I thought nano technology was supposed to be small ;P

Eli

[satanami69]

So what we really need is a carbon-nanotube cotton gin.

Yeah, and optical disks that hold gigabytes...

[Belial6]

I hear you, I remember when they were promising optical disks that would hold as much data as hundreds of floppy disks, and would be 100x bigger than that 5 megabyte hard drive in your PC. Where are they?!?!?!

Then you had promises that they would release optical disks that would hold gigabytes...that's right GIGABYTES, of data. Did they ever show up?

Even just a few years ago, we heard about this 'pixie dust' stuff for hard drives. This technology was supposed to make hard drive density high enough that you could go down to your local Fry's, and for a few hundred dollars buy a terrabyte drive. When will the empty promises end?!?!?!

That's it?

[KidSock]

10 gigabits in a 13cm diameter wafer? Does this really sound that good to anyone? I mean a little flash card is like 3cm wide and holds a gigaBYTE. This wafer holds 10gigabits/8bits = ~1.2 gigabytes. Harddrives? Assuming you have a bunch of these wafers for "platters" the size would still be pretty limited.

Down the tubes!

[VegeBrain]

So finally when the system crashes we can say it went down the tubes and really mean it!

Silicon nanotubes

[blincoln]

Apparently, the answer is "yes."

Magnetic Press?

[linzeal]

I'm thinking they are going to be formed quick and fast. So we are looking at taking one form of carbon and turning it quickly into another form through the application of pressure and magnetism. So maybe like a magnetic press?

Re:13 centimeters diameter??? 10 Gigabits????

[Urzumph]

WTF? How is centimeters a 'non-standard measurement'? centimeters is part of the International System of Units. Just because you don't happen to use SI / metric doesn't mean you should winge about it.

What are the odds?

[dtfinch]

Several times every year, we hear of some company expecting to soon release a storage product that'll be orders of magnitude better than any existing technology, yet somehow they hardly do.

not hype this time

[Goldsmith]

As a nanotube researcher, I usually have some snotty remark about how no one pays attention to reality when it comes to carbon nanotube research. However, this thing works. It's really not that complicated, and has passed scientific review multiple times. These people have been in the nanotube research community almost as long as it has existed. They are real scientists, doing real work.

I'm not saying they're going to hit the exact specs they're shooting for, just that the basic science is prooven, and that working test devices really have already been made out of nanotubes.

NRAM? What happened to MRAM?

[nitehawk214]

I want to know what happened MRAM, a magnetic based, faster, and static replacement for our current DRAM? Guess they are faster at producing acronyms then product.

I've seen them in person.

[cocoamix]

I am in charge of the SEM on our campus, and we have people from physics over all the time, and last month we had a guy over who was making carbon nanotubes.

The ones I saw were made from Acetylene gas and ammonia. A tiny particle of Iron starts the process of tube formation. The carbon adheres to the base of the iron particle and builds up from there, the iron particle determining the diameter of the tube.

Reminded me of the smelly back snake fireworks I used to like as a kid.
Except that they are a lot smaller. And don't stink. And don't need to be started with a match.
And can do neat things.