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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."

13 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. And what exactly by bigattichouse · · Score: 4, Funny

    what will we do when these "tubes" become clogged, and we can't get our email?

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    meh
    1. Re:And what exactly by flyingfsck · · Score: 4, Funny

      Call Joe the Nanoplumber?

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      Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  2. 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 Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Funny

      Heck call me when a product is availible....at ANY price

      Sure. You can order it now for the low low price of $3 billion. Shipping time is estimated at 10 years and 7 days with free standard shipping, or 10 years and 3 days with Express Shipping for $15 extra.

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      The enemies of Democracy are
    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.

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      Free Martian Whores!
  3. That should... by imamac · · Score: 4, Funny

    That should be faster than anybody would ever need...

  4. Re:PETA won't like this at all.... by Daswolfen · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's what she said!

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    Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
  5. Low OPs lifetime by NuclearRampage · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "The device managed to withstand 18,000 operations, which is a reasonable lifetime for a memory device, she adds."
    Is that good for experimental chips or do I not understand how such a low number is reasonable?

    1. 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.

  6. Re:nano internet? by jd · · Score: 5, Funny

    No, it would be 10^-9 LoCs. You're thinking of deci-internets.

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    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  7. Well, which Flash are we talking about here? by JoshDM · · Score: 3, Funny

    Jay Garrick isn't as fast as Wally West or Barry Allen...

  8. Regressing by flaming+error · · Score: 4, Funny

    ENIAC was orders of magnitude faster. These guys do 100 nanoseconds/nanotube -> 100 seconds/tube!

  9. Luxury! by pjt33 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    100s of nanoseconds? Luxury! When I were young you had to store your data as sound pulses in a tube full o' mercury. You had to wait 100s of milliseconds for the pulse to reach the other end. Tell that to kids nowadays, they won't believe you.