Carbon Nanotube-Based NVRAM In 2-3 Years?

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.

Comments

Forgot to post link to paper

[Stile 65]

So here it is...

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

So, if this were extended to a...

[StressGuy]

"Backend Architecture, Nano-RAM, type A" it would be called BA-Nano-RAM-A? ....it's ok....I'll just go now....

Re:So, if this were extended to a...

[ashridah]

It could be worse, it could be a gate and switch scam

Simulations or something concrete?

[haluness]

A brief scan of the paper seemed to indicate that their results were based on simulations. Do they have some working model that justifies it coming out in 2 or 3 years?

Or did I read the paper to fast (hey, at least I *did* RTFA)?

Re:Simulations or something concrete?

[MightyYar]

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.

Re:Simulations or something concrete?

[Shad_the_protector]

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

who knew

[President_Camacho]

According to NanoWerk, UC Riverside researchers have come up with a memory device based on telescoping multi-walled carbon nanotubes.

Who would have guessed that, in the future, your computer would be a series of tubes?

Nano Abacus?

[Radon360]

It looks to me like they've essentially created what could be compared to a nano-abacus. I wonder how immune this system would be to physical movement (i.e. jarring). In a similar vein, I would imagine that it would be just as static sensitive as most other memory devices even though.

Did I miss something, though? How is the position of the telescoping tube read? Applying a current to it would change the position, would it not?

2-3 years? Vapourware alarm!

[mark-t]

I've just seen that figure too many times now... 2 years is still a short enough time that it might seem feasable but still long enough away that by the time it has gone by, most everybody will have forgotten about it and moved on to something else.

It'd be really neat if this turns out to be genuine, but I'm not holding my breath. Been disappointed too many times already.

Prescient SF FTW

[JesseL]

Sounds vaguely similar to the nano-scale rod-logic of Neal Stephenson's stories.

How do you interface with a 100Ghz device?

[LM741N]

Memory and/or processors running at 100Ghz sounds great, but how is such a chip going to be connected to the outside world of peripherals? Beams of light? Waveguides? Or will everything have to be contained on one chip?

Movements wouldn't bother it at all

[IdahoEv]

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.