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Nanotube Memory Finally Beats Flash For Speed

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the more-nano-for-your-nano dept.

holy_calamity writes "Although flash memory that stores each bit on a single nanotube has been tinkered with in the lab for years, it has always been much slower than the devices in use today. A Finnish team has now cracked that, demonstrating single bits of nanotube memory that can be written in just 100 nanoseconds. Existing flash memory takes tens of microseconds."

6 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Wow, that's pretty cool by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Call me back when it's available at Costco for 100$ per Terabyte.

    1. Re:Wow, that's pretty cool by interkin3tic · · Score: 1, Informative

      You read /. but don't care about new hardware until its something you can buy for cheap? Okay... There are some hobbies you might consider, like stamp collecting, to more effectively use your time.

    2. Re:Wow, that's pretty cool by mcgrew · · Score: 3, Informative

      I RTFA yesterday, it will be a while. Right now they only have a one bit memory, and TFA says a lot more work will have to be done before they can get millions or billions of them on a chip, let alone mass produce the thing.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
  2. Re:speed by Who+Is+The+Drizzle · · Score: 2, Informative

    Existing flash memory takes tens of microseconds.

  3. Re:Low OPs lifetime by marcansoft · · Score: 5, Informative

    Your average Flash chip does 100k erase/write cycles. 18k is certainly reasonable for new tech, which will certainly improve over time. The number refers to the number of operations per erasable block (or it will in the future), so in practice you get a much larger number of total I/O operations on the entire chip, given a reasonable wear leveling algorithm.

  4. Re:Low OPs lifetime by Telvin_3d · · Score: 2, Informative

    Let's say they make this into a thumb drive. Now, let's say that you read/write the entire drive twice a day. That's four operations. 18,000/4/365 gives you twelve years of this. Even if you are filling and then erasing the drive ten times every day it is still two and a half years of use. Less than you can do with current flash memory, but fine as a proof-of-concept.