Array-Based Memory May Put a Terabyte On a Chip

Lucas123 writes "A new type of flash memory, called array-based memory, could offer a terabyte of data on a single chip within the next decade by bypassing current NAND memory technology, which is limited by the miniaturization capability of lithography. According to the Computerworld story, start-up Nanochip Inc. is being backed by Intel and others, and over 11 years has made research breakthroughs that will enable it to deliver working prototypes to potential manufacturing partners next year. And by 2010, the first chips are expected to reach 100GB capacity."

Comments

Re:I can't imagine 1 TB

[Jason Levine]

0.1 Library of Congresses according to this website:

http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/how_big.htm

10 Terabytes: Printed collection of the U. S. Library of Congress

50 Gigs

[zippthorne]

We only need 50 GB, and in a form factor about a third of a deck of cards, and cheaper than a BRD. And it doesn't even have to be rewritable. Then, the tyranny of spinning disk media will finally be temporarily ameliorated, by USB high definition video players.

Imagine: not having to worry about your media obsoleting because the interface is so cheap and useful that it is guaranteed to be on every computing device long after it has been surpassed by superior buses.

Imagine a robust format that doesn't skip or scratch, even if you keep it in your pocket with your keys.

Imagine a built-in crypto chip ensuring strong DRM by essencially creating an encrypted ssh tunnel straight to your video display device, using a different key every time for the actual data.

(ok, the last one's maybe not so great, but there's no reason why anything with a usb connect can't have the crypto built in, so you'd still have your portability. If there's still a problem, then it's better to enforce the rules as perfectly as possible. People don't usually object to rules that don't affect them, witness the capricious speed laws for your example there)

Re:50 Gigs

[Original Replica]

If there's still a problem, then it's better to enforce the rules as perfectly as possible.

According to the series of tubes "The best way to repeal a bad law is to enforce it." was first said by Lincoln, Grant, and several other old dead guys. It might hold true for criminal laws which regulate behaviors, it doesn't work so well for thing that regulate the flow of money. Mostly because the laws which regulate the flow of money, make it flow into the pockets of the powerful. Secondly they people who are in a position to make the needed changes aren't actually effected by something like a $25 CD, because they have two or three orders of magnitude more disposable income than the rest of the society. The richest 10% own 89% of the stock. In a corporate world where everything is beholden to the shareholder, those 10% are the only ones who really count. That same 10% isn't effected by overpriced CDs or overpriced gas or overpriced pharmaceuticals, because they have plenty of cash to cover it without it effecting their quality of life.

Re:50 Gigs

[Bob-taro]

In a corporate world where everything is beholden to the shareholder, those 10% are the only ones who really count. That same 10% isn't effected by overpriced CDs or overpriced gas or overpriced pharmaceuticals, because they have plenty of cash to cover it without it effecting their quality of life.

That's an interesting statistic about stock ownership. But I wouldn't be so sure they don't feel the effect of rising prices -- especially gas prices. The top 10% starts at about $100K. I know several people with incomes over 100K and trust me, ANYONE can live at or beyond their means. Plus, wealthier people probably USE more gas in their big cars and trucks. Why, even Rush Limbaugh once complained that he had to ask his pilot to fly his private jet slower because of the rising cost of jet fuel.

Okay, maybe that was a bad example.

Re:I can't imagine 1 TB

[Sylver Dragon]

1 TB = a small corner of my SAN.
Personally, I love the idea of small, high capacity, solid state drives. The systems I admin are used for GIS research, and I dread what may happen anytime one of the researches takes a laptop into the field for data collection. So far, the worst which has happened was that one laptop went for a swim, which might have been ok except the salinity of the water was very high.
Ok, so a solid state drive may not have helped too much in that case, but for the occasional drop, bang or 120 degree weather; solid state drives are just gonna survive better.

Re:USB 3.0 desperately needed here...

[TeknoHog]

USB 3.0 or *something faster* will be required for devices this large in portable storage capacity.. USB 2.0 is ~480Mbps (theoretical max) and it would take forever to transfer a terabyte over USB 2.0.

Firewire 400 is already faster than USB 2.0 in practical use. It was designed for heavy media/disk usage from the beginning, unlike USB that was meant to replace the old serial/parallel ports for slow peripherals. For one thing, USB only has a single-pair data cable that carries either incoming or outgoing data at one time, while FW has dedicated pairs for both directions (like twisted-pair Ethernet). I haven't found USB's CPU usage a problem in practice, but nevertheless it feels much slower. For example, my external drive has both USB and Firewire ports, and with USB it takes much more time for Linux to find the drive and its partitions.

That's just for Firewire 400, and we already have faster versions. I find it really unfortunate that USB is being pushed so much while FW is in decline. The USB 3.0 with its fiberoptic links looks like a particularly desperate move to extend the standard, not the least when you consider the fragility of fiberoptics in the hands of end users.

Re:Longevity and speed

[JustinOpinion]

This technology is essentially what is used in atomic force microscopes, and was being investigated by IBM for data storage under the name "Millipede". It basically involves a huge array of cantilevers that have very sharp tips on them (typical tip size is 20 nm but smaller is possible). The tips are used to read and write dots on the surface.

So yes, this system has moving parts. The tips have to scan across the surface, and the cantilevers are basically springs that bend up and down as the tips move over the surface. This definitely has some wear issues to consider, but it's nothing like the large-scale and high-speed movements of a hard drive (where a >2" disk is rotating at >7,000 rpm). Instead, the tips are moving laterally by micrometers at most (the huge array is what allows a large surface to be probed), and the cantilevers are springing up-and-down by only nanometers. The movement in an AFM is controlled using piezoelectric deformation of quartz actuators. This small-scale movement is very robust and reproducible. Quartz oscillators can vibrate/move thousands of times a second continuously for years without much problem (think of oscillators used for clocks, etc.). Moreover this technology has been used in commercial AFMs for years, so it's well-understood.

The thousands of tips are probably all actuated together by a single piezo-motor. They move in unison which would actually allow for high-speed reading/writing (since thousands of bits are read/written at once). You're right that each tip is in principle a point of failure. However, with the right error-correction algorithm, the device could be built so that even if a few tips break, no data is lost.

I agree that the access time isn't going to be as fast as modern RAM, but it could very well be faster than modern hard-drives. I think this is intended as permanent storage, not volatile memory.

Re:USB 3.0 desperately needed here...

[Digi-John]

My data never goes away... I use Venti at work. Unlike Timemachine, it uses an intelligent backup scheme, coalescing blocks so a block of data will only ever be written once. That means that every time you save more mail, your 2GB mail file doesn't get completely replicated on Venti, just the new data.