Researchers Achieve Amazing Memory Density

Mr. Fahrenheit writes in with a Wired story on research out of Arizona State, where researchers have "developed a low-cost, low-power computer memory that could put terabyte-sized thumb drives in consumers' pockets within a few years... The new memory technology — programmable metallization cell (PMC) — comes as current storage technologies are starting to reach their physical limits." PMC involves the on-demand creation of copper nano-wire bridges. It's said to promise memories that are 1/10 the cost and 1/1000 the power consumption of conventional Flash memory. Three memory manufacturers have licensed the technology and the first chips are expected on the market in 18 months.

Comments

Re:The problem with this memory....

[ScentCone]

The problem with how memory is that it gives developers no incentive to optimize code to run it faster/better/smaller other then small speed boosts. 1 TB of storage would be nice, but if it means that I have to download 300 GB for a program or a Linux distribution with the same speed of 1 MB/second it would take forever or say a 7 MB web site. We need to see an increase in Internet speeds at affordable prices first before we go overboard with physical storage.

Um... there ARE other uses for lots of storage, you know? Say, backing up in the field after spending a week shooting a couple thousand images per day with a digital camera that writes 50mb files?

Video?

Multi-track digital audio?

It isn't always about Linux distros, you know?

Re:Read/write (especially WRITE) speed?

[safXmal]

I went to the website http://www.axontc.com/ . and found following description;
"Key Benefits
PMCm has a number of unique attributes that make it a highly attractive component for future systems on silicon:
Operation at low voltages ( 0.3 V)
High speed write and erase operations
( 30 ns)
Low energy to change state ( 1 pJ)
Physical scalability to tens of nm
Easy integration with IC logic circuitry
Operation as a low refresh-rate DRAM or as a true non-volatile memory with high endurance (based on the programming mode).
These features define a class of devices that are essential for projected electronics systems and which will be difficult to realize using developed versions of today's circuits. "

Hope that answers some of your questions

Re:And it will be released in 5 years

[timeOday]

I do think the paperless office is arriving. I work at a normal big company and none of our processes are paper any more. They've even decreased the frequency of internal mail deliveries because it was underutilized.

Looking around the web, I see a lot of stuff from around the year 2000 about how the paperless office is a myth and paper use increased for the previous 20 years, but more recently we seem to have turned a corner. Not that we'll be truly paperless, but the growth in demand for paper is less than GDP growth and usage per worker is actually falling. There's even a quote from a paper company in there.