New Silicon-Based Memory 5X Denser Than NAND Flash

Lucas123 writes "Researchers at Rice University said today they have been able to create a new non-volatile memory using nanocrystal wires as small as 5 nanometers wide that can make chips five times more dense than the 27 nanometer NAND flash memory being manufactured today. And, the memory is cheap because it uses silicon and not more expensive graphite as been used in previous iterations of the nanowire technology. The nanowires also allow stacking of layers to create 3-D memory, even more dense. 'The fact that they can do this in 3D makes makes it highly scalable. We've got memory that's made out of dirt-cheap material and it works,' a university spokesman said."

Comments

Re:Is anybody writing this down?

[TheRaven64]

This one actually seems pretty underwhelming. 5 times the density of flash? Flash density is doubling about every year, so they have less than three years to get it to market for it to compete with flash, and since it's currently at the university lab prototype stage, this seems wildly optimistic. If it's five times the density with the same process technology, then it would be impressive, but it sounds like it needs entirely new fabrication techniques, so it looks like the kind of thing that will just be surpassed by other (probably similar) incremental improvements from Intel and so on.

And, yes, someone does get paid for these articles. Why do you think MIT has the reputation it has? They do some good work, but they also employ a very competent publicity department. Read a peer-reviewed journal, and you'll find MIT represented about as well as a lot of other decent universities. Read a trade magazine, and you'll see ten times as many articles about MIT breakthroughs as any other university.