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Gecko's Feet Power New RAM Chips

Posted by Zonk on from the i-don't-want-to-use-fred-flintstone's-computer dept.

An anonymous reader writes "IT Week has a story about carbon nanotubes being used to make memory chips. As the name suggests, carbon nanotubes are extremely small cylinders of carbon, and they have some similar properties to the extremely fine hairs on the feet of Geckos that enable the lizards to climb walls and hang from ceilings. The new chips work faster than current technologies, and hold their data without needing a power source." We've previously discussed this technology.

3 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Great News! by rAiNsT0rm · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...I just saved a bunch of money on my car ins...RAM Chips.

    --
    http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
  2. Upcoming lizard related technology... by Churla · · Score: 5, Funny
    "Soft-tongue" - This will allow code to adaptively eat bugs in software. MS has been rumored to be in talks to buy this technology outright. Unfortunately it will also be unsightly enough to creep out your significant other. (which means it will fit in with most other MS software)

    "Chameleo-browser" - A new plugin for firefox which will allow porn pages, when seen from a distance to blend in with spreadsheets and become unnoticable.

    ** Note - In response to these advances the LOST (Lizard Open Source Team) has chosen to patent their genetic makeup to prevent futher abuses of their technology. NTP will be handling the patents.

    --
    I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
  3. The Writer of TFA clearly doesn't know much by SpeakerToManagers · · Score: 5, Interesting
    He says breezily,
    Although they don't occur naturally, they have similar properties to setae ...
    The first part of that sentence is absolutely false, since buckytubes are found in large quantities in ordinary soot, for instance from candles. The only reason we can't just burn candles to make our RAM chips is that there are a lot of different kinds of tube in the soot: single-walled tubes of different chirali ties, multi-walled (concentric) tubes with different numbers of tubes nested within, and various pieces of partially-closed carbon sheets. Buckytubes interesting properties are largely the result of having tubes of a single, known, type, so soot isn't terribly useful by itself. The second part of the sentence is true, but not terribly important, since almost any nanostructure with long, thin parts would exhibit significant van der Waals force when brought in contact with a surface. That's how an atomic force microscope works. I'd say the author is dependent on press releases for everything in the article, and so I wouldn't trust anything he had to say very much, especially the statement that we'll see commercial chips this year. Speaker