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Making Computer Memory From a Virus

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the at-the-speed-of-sick dept.

An Ac writes, "By coating 30-nanometre-long chunks of tobacco mosaic virus with platinum nanoparticles, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have created a transistor with very fast switching speed. They say it could eventually be used to make memory chips for MP3 players and digital cameras. A device fitted with such a virus-chip would access data much more quickly than one using flash memory."

5 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Buzzzzzwords! by tygerstripes · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Tobacco, virus, nanotech... oh my!

    I can't wait to see how quickly this tech is misunderstood by politicians and eco-warriors!

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    Meta will eat itself
  2. Very fast switching speed???? by Maddog+Batty · · Score: 3, Insightful

    100 microsecond switch speed is very very slow for modern transistors (mentioned in article). What am I missing here? Is there a mistake in the article?

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  3. Ya know what I'm sick of.. by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the "basic research == future product" meme. For fuck sake. I bet if you were to go back the last 5 years and collect up all these articles and do a little survey of whether or not ANY of these bullshit descriptions of future products have come to pass you would find that NONE of them have. Why? Because if you discover something that could be turned into a product, you don't tell the world; you go find a venture capitalist and make the damn product.

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    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:Ya know what I'm sick of.. by teslar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You obviously have a point, but I think this (and all previous instances you refer to) is just a spin to keep funding bodies and marketing droids happy. Use your research to answer some fundamental philosophical questions on life, the universe and everything or whatever and you'll get a big yawn. Say that you're using nanotech, use the words "faster memory", "ipod" and "could replace flash" in one sentence, basically make dollar signs appear in the marketing droids' eyes, and you get to be in the news everywhere, people notice you and the next grant application should go a lot smoother.

  4. Re:mp3 players don't ned it by dk-software-engineer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Soemthing that typically reads 128kbps doesn't exactly require heaps of bandwidth.
    It does when I update it, or just use it for generic data-transfer.