Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Researchers Achieve Amazing Memory Density

Posted by kdawson on from the line-forms-here-for-flash-replacements dept.

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.

5 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. And it will be released in 5 years by Daimanta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Togheher with your flying car. No. Really.

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
  2. Re:Vaporware. by rbarreira · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think most people nowdays appreciate how much 1.44 MB is...

    --

    The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
  3. Energy efficiency not meh by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Energy efficiency is not at all arbitrary if it is coming out of a battery.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  4. Ummm, why? by phorm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When would you ever have to transfer a full terabyte at a time? Unless you're doing a really bigass backup to this thing, you probably won't.
    And if you are, well that's a hell of a lot faster and more convenient than burning 233 standard DVD-R's (about what it would take with non dual-sided discs) or writing the equivilent tape or network-based backup method. Heck, that beats out most disk-to-disk transfers.

  5. Re:Other specs? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about speed, durability, mean time before failure, etc
    Man, you guys are a tough crowd. This is a breakthrough for chrissake. I can imagine if Slashdot had been around when they reported Alexander Graham Bell's famous "Watson, come here I need you" experiment. You'd have been saying "But will he be able to get speech enhancement using minimum mean-square error log-spectral amplitude estimators?" And asking about Wiener filters.

    But that's why I love you.

    [he said "Wiener" filter, heh-heh]
    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.