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Molecular Clusters That Can Retain Charge Could Revolutionize Computer Memory
jfruh writes:Computing devices have been gobbling up more and more memory, but storage tech has been hitting its limits, creating a bottleneck. Now researchers in Spain and Scotland have reported a breakthrough in working with metal-oxide clusters that can retain their charge. These molecules could serve as the basis for RAM and flash memory that will be leagues smaller than existing components (abstract).
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Not that long ago people were talking about the huge breakthrough the spintronics would bring - that we are going to have terabytes of DRAM which could retain their memory even when power was switched off, that we could turn on our PC and have an almost instantaneous boot-up
So where is the spintronics nowadays?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
We decided to call this device the MOCTCRTC (pronounced "most-critic").
This will be used until a name similarly catchy as MOSFET can be discovered.
I understand that science journals have their place but I ain't paying no $32 to read an article. Why don't the authors submit a decently detailed popular version as a press release once their article gets accepted for the rest of us?
The basic idea behind flash is that you have small electron traps - areas which you can charge by injecting electrons through a barrier - which you clear by draining out those electrons in bulk. This seems to be a reasonable way to make smaller traps. Then again, small traps are part of the poor lifetimes of new flash, and the area size of a single cell is less relevant when you can stack them. So this may provide a small improvement, or offer a different set of trade-offs. But fundamentally bits don't get smaller nor cheaper by an order of magnitude with this idea. Even if it's viable, it's just an evolutionary improvement. And it may very well fail if it turns out to be a small improvement for a truly different process.
...could revolutionize..." How many stories have we seen about tech "breakthroughs" in solar energy, chip architecture, batteries, cold fusion or perpetual motion with breathless hype that never pan out? There is some information here but the speculation is uncalled for.
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What does a 'write-once-erase’ access model mean? For all we know, it means they can only write the data once, not more then once, and erase it without the ability to do any reads. That's one interpretation of those three words in that order.
Is there some way we can retroactively erase this from Slashdot? It's so broken it cannot be fixed.
Everyone leave this now and don't come back. It's the closest we can get to erasing it. That's what I'm doing. Now.
Why is Snark Required?
Wasn't molecular memory mentioned as a building block for Skynet in a deleted scene from The Terminator? What a wonderful future we'll be living in, real soon!
OK so they created a small representation of the proposed switch, charted the atomic and molecular properties then simulated the possibility of the deployment if the scale-up works to spec. It's very good molecular engineering and a nice testing process, but two things about it bother me. One, no actual fabrication of the larger cell level construction was done so the statement that it can be scaled with existing fabrication machinery is a half truth and not a triviality either. Processes of creation that work very well when creating a single base structure at the lab level often go awry when scaling to real silicon production. Two it's still attempting to keep using MOS techniques because of the preponderance of investment in that particular methodology, and every time I see that I think vacuum tubes and transistors. Anyone that knows why no televisions or radios are made in America anymore ought to be leery of constantly trying to find dodges around problems with a current manufacturing technique simply because "we have a lot of money tied up in doing it this way" and are unwilling to invest in different technologies. Frankly while everyone is trying to find a way to keep MOS relevant, other technologies are creeping up. Don't be shocked when China or someone else with no large investment to protect in silicon MOS starts producing carbon tube microcircuits on diamond substrate that blow away in size, speed, power conservation and heat dissipation, all the silicon out there. It's very good science, don't get me wrong, but it really looks like trying to find ways to square the circle, when really fresh process technology approaches are what's really required.
"Two decades of research in microgravity have shown that certain biochemical processes can be altered by weightlessness"
The research is narrowing down what is going on and not refuting the idea entirely as the AC who is both quoting it as an authoritative source and calling it "Space Nutter junk" is suggesting.
I don't want to "precipitate" an argument, but have you actually thought of the implications of a lack of gravity at all? It's not all perfect solutions or things perfectly suspended after all. You may dismiss my words as scum or dross, but I'm just floating out an idea that will hopefully sink in. What would changing the concent
Biochemistry is not my field, but I did a bit of stuff with metal solidification and gravity is a pretty major factor with concentration of different phases in ingots since the crystals that don't form attached to an edge usually sink. It's a bit hard to muck about with molten metal in space though - even mercury and potassium are very nasty things to have in something where a crack would be catastrophic.
I'm not the one calling your words scum or dross. It's a legitimate question that I'm responding to. I have in fact thought about the implications of a lack of gravity upon chemical reactions, which is why I pointed out the few cases where it would be important. For homogeneous reactions (which are central to biochemistry), I encourage you to calculate the force of gravity, compared to local electrostatic forced such as dipoles and bond dipoles.
I agree with what you're saying that precipitation reactions will be affected by lack of gravity, as I repeatedly pointed out when I refer to biphasic reaction and phase-related reactions.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Scum and dross are a consequence of gravity, that's all.