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Carbon Nanotube-Based NVRAM In 2-3 Years?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the nano-ram dept.

According to NanoWerk, UC Riverside researchers have come up with a memory device based on telescoping multi-walled carbon nanotubes. According to one of the researchers, 'This finding leads to a promising potential to build ultrafast high-density nonvolatile memory, up to 100 gigahertz or into the terahertz range" and a prototype could be demonstrated "in the next two to three years.' Similar devices from UCLA and Caltech based on bistable rotaxanes are farther along in being integrated into actual memory circuits, but tend to break after a fairly small number of position changes. Carbon nanotubes may promise more durable switches.

6 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Forgot to post link to paper by Stile+65 · · Score: 5, Informative

    So here it is...

    http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0957-4484/18/9/0957 05/

    --
    I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
  2. Re:Simulations or something concrete? by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Informative
    The working model would be the prototype that they are speculating could be built in 2-3 years. From TFA:

    Jiang predicted a likely functioning prototype of a molecular processor could be demonstrated in the next two to three years.
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    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  3. Re:Simulations or something concrete? by Shad_the_protector · · Score: 3, Informative

    The title is sightly wrong here, they plan on having a proto in 2 or 3 year..... not a wide-spread product.

    But it is still a good news to know that there is something coming for NVRAM better than flash memory

  4. Re:Weren't we supposed to have this last year? by chrisb33 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I wouldn't condemn Nantero to vaporware status just yet - it seems that they've been making progress. Here's a list of their press releases - notice that they successfully fabricated a switch in April and have made their processes compatible with current CMOS fab lines.

  5. Movements wouldn't bother it at all by IdahoEv · · Score: 3, Informative

    At the nano scale, momentum of objects is near zero and friction forces, van der waals, and the like dominate entirely. Macro-scale motion, and even intense vibration, simply won't move things around relative to each other.

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    I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
  6. Re:who knew by ch-chuck · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think it did a lot of work as a serial processor. From this description:

    "The ENIAC was controlled through a train of electronic pulses."

    --and--

    "because the various units of the ENIAC could operate simultaneously, the ENIAC could perform calculations in parallel. (BUT!) ENIAC programmers tended to avoid this use because the impressive but limited reliability of the ENIAC favored the use of as few units as possible for a given application."

    --
    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }