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

It has been obvious for years.

[symbolset]

When we run out of possibilities in shrinking the process we go vertical and take advantage of the third dimension. Moore's law is safe for a good long time.

This tech is still several years out from production but other 3D silicon options are in testing, and some are in production.

When the Z density matches the X and Y density in fifteen years or so we'll be ready for optical or quantum tech.

Re:It has been obvious for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least you have a theoretical possibility to avoid that problem in ssd-disks.
Since you are only going to access one part of the memory at a time the rest could be unpowered. This gives a constant heat do get rid of regardless of the number of layers.

This is of course not possible for CPU's and other circuits where all parts are supposed to be active.

Re:It has been obvious for years.

[Jeremi]

We don't just go vertical without solving the heat dissipation problem

The obvious solution to that: don't generate any heat. Now, where are the room-temperature superconductors I was promised???

Re:It has been obvious for years.

[takev]

I think we will have to wait until we have super-semi conductors. One where it either conducts perfectly, or not at all, depending on a third input (which itself has an infinite resistance).

Maybe I should patend this "idea" for a transistor, I am probably to late though.

Well that may be problematic

[Sycraft-fu]

One thing you could run in to are heat issues. Remember that high performance chips tend to give off a lot of heat. Memory isn't as bad, but it still warms up. Start stacking layers on top of each other and it could be a problem.

Who knows? We may be in for a slowing down of transistor count growth rate. That may not mean a slow down in performance, perhaps other materials or processes will allow for speed increases. While lightspeed is a limit, that doesn't mean parts of a CPU couldn't run very fast.

Also it may slow down. Exponential growth doesn't last for ever. We may start to hit the limits of what we can do.

Have to see.

Re:Well that may be problematic

[symbolset]

They're all over that. As the transistors shrink they give off less heat. New transistor technologies also use less energy each per square nanometer, and there's new ones in the pipe. Not all of the parts of a CPU, SSD cell or RAM chip are working at the same time so intelligent distribution of the loads give more thermal savings. Then there are new technologies for conducting the heat out of the hotspots, including using artificial diamond as a substrate rather than silicon, or as an intermediary electrical isolation layer as well as a thermal conductor. If they can solve the carbon or silicon layer deposition issues the thermal issues will be OK.

An interesting evolution of 3D in semiconductors will be leveraging different parts of the processor in three dimensions. This should resolve many of the speed-of-light and latency issues designers have struggled with for some years.

Re:Well that may be problematic

[repapetilto]

This might be a dumb question, but why not have some sort of capillary-esque network with a high heat-capacity fluid being pumped through it? Maybe even just deionized water if you have a way of keeping the resistivity high enough.

looking for high density ROM to stop digital decay

[OrangeTide]

I'm still waiting for some cheap, stable, high density ROM or preferably WORM/PROM. Even flash has only about 20 years retention with the power off. Which sounds like a lot, but it's not all that difficult to find a working synthesizer or drum machine from the mid-80s in working condition. But if you put flash in everything your favorite devices may be dead in 20 years. for most devices this is OK. But what if some of us want to build something a little more permanent? Like an art piece, a space probe, a DSP based guitar effects pedal, or a car?

Some kind of device with some nano wires that I can fuse to a plate or something with voltage would be nice if it could be made in a density of at least 256Mbit (just an arbitrary number I picked). EPROMs (with the little UV window) also only last for about 10-20 years (and a PROM is just an EPROM without a window). So we should expect to already have this digital decay problem in older electronics. Luckily for high volumes it was cheaper to use a mask ROM than a PROM or EPROM. But these days NAND flash(MLC) is so cheap and high density that mask ROMs seem like a thing of the past, to the point that it is difficult to find a place that can do mask ROMs that can also do high density wafers.