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Tour's group isn't the only one exploring three-dimensional memory. IBM's Stuart Parkin is developing so-called racetrack memory that stores data by altering the magnetic properties of nanowires deposited on silicon. And chip manufacturer SanDisk is developing a three-dimensional memory that uses vertically stacked arrays of diodes.
In the coming years, it will be increasingly important to develop three-dimensional memory, says Tour. "If you're not in the 3-D memory business in five years, you're not going to be in the memory business."
The work has gotten the attention of industry forecasters. "The concept is interesting and potentially promising," says Victor Zhirnov of the Semiconductor Research Corporation. He notes, though, that it's still too early to give the technology a full endorsement, as the underlying mechanism of the memory is not yet clear.
Nonetheless, performance of the early prototypes of graphitic memory is promising, says Tour. The cells can be written to and read from at speeds comparable to today's flash memory. And the voltages that are required to operate them are lower than those required for flash.
In addition, the technology could extend beyond memory to another part of the electronics industry that builds chips called field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). These chips are reconfigurable for different tasks, from controlling radios to crunching numbers, but today's FPGAs are limited in the number of times they can be reconfigured. If the components between layers in FPGAs were connected using graphitic pillars or strips, says Tour, then they could be almost infinitely rewritable.
The Rice University researchers have partnered with startup NuPGA, a company that will use the graphite technology to make FGPAs. In addition, Tour says, an unnamed company supports the memory work. Tour suspects that it could take at least eight years to turn the prototypes into products, because of the need to ensure reliability and optimize the manufacturing process.
Using atom-thick carbon instead of silicon could pack ever more data into portable electronics.
IBM's ultra-dense racetrack memory is closer to commercialization.
How can they say it has "no moving parts" and "won't wear out over time"? The storage mechanism is a CRACK. They might be correct -- maybe the crack can form and disappear billions of times -- but you can't simply assume that.
It has no moving parts for the purpose of anything that will affect us. You're right, everything has moving parts, those dang atoms just won't stop vibrating, and that's before we even go subatomic! We have to have a sense of scale when looking at this sort of technology...
In addition, one of the principle reasons they are saying it will take 8 years before it's commercialized, is because they need to test if it does form and fix the crack without deviation.
How many times of writing&reading the device can afford?
How about the stability of the cracks?
The article does not mention the data.
It mentions this exactly, at the end where it touches on the fact it will be 8 years of testing to gather this information before it will be able to be commercialized.
It's not the article neglecting to tell you the information, it's the fact the info isn't known yet...
One of the things they're going to find is that if they (CAN) choose ahead of time where the "crack" is going to occur (possibly by a process very similar to perforating the edges of a stamp) they will find they are then able to a) more fully characterize the MTBF of the bit, b) "stagger" the "crack" location to prevent interaction with adjacent layers in a three-D stack (an otherwise possibly-problematic issue), and possibly c) play around with multi-valued "bits" (i.e., embedding two, three, maybe four bits of data into one layer of one graphite 'cell').
You heard it here first. I'd be curious to get an opinion whether this type of public discourse MIGHT interfere with patentability... Anyone??
Venturing "sideways" -- I'd also be curious to find out more about the energy levels involved (in particular, at what frequencies is graphite transparent?); specifically, whether a properly prepared surface, illuminated by an image-modulated input and then strobed by a second "bias" input, could, by virtue of the combined energy inputs exceeding some "write" threshold, capture the image-modulated input across that surface... (oh, man, nice -- if you assume some useful optical transmission loss through each layer of a given 'stacked' cell, you could get a 'digitized' signal based on how deeply switching occurred).
Maybe not -- but interesting to contemplate, because with gradient-controlled multiple bits on multiple layers per cell and an optical write AND read potential (hey, that "crack" looks visible, so there's some cell-specific potential for useable interference effects), yet another type of holographic data storage doesn't sound all that far fetched.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Shiladie
56 Comments
Memory dream?
It sounds like it fulfills most of the requirements to be a breakthrough tech:
When compared to the current tech: Flash
- can use existing manufacture methods
- Faster
- more energy efficient
- more space efficient
- more reliable
- No foreseeable massive price increase
The only damper on this article is the 8 year forecast for commercialization.
If no glaring flaws are found, I look forward to seeing this tech in the future!
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