Posted on 12/11/2006 9:19:10 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Spooky memory-at-a-distance.
-AE
fyi
Hat tip to HardOCP....
Morphing Memory
Superfast atom shuffling inspires data-storage alternatives
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Peter Weiss
Anyone who purchases an electronic camera, cell phone, voice recorder, travel disk, or PDA, typically brings home a stick, card, or some other medium containing a chip ready to store information via a technology known as flash memory. Last year, consumers worldwide bought almost $12 billion worth of flash products, which depend on electrons to store data. The semiconductor industry expects global demand to surpass $18 billion by 2007.
Nonvolatile memory systems, in which data remain intact even when the power is off, are widespread as the magnetic-disk drives of computers. More recently, portable consumer products have taken advantage of nonvolatile memory provided by fast, high-capacity microchips. In these products, flash rules.
Although camera buffs, for instance, can today store hundreds of images on a stamp-size chip costing less than $100, they're demanding more data-dense, cheaper storage components. Engineers working to create the next generation of data-storage devices consider flash to be "the technology to beat," says Matthias Wuttig of RWTH Aachen University in Germany.
Several technologies have potential to dominate the future of microchip nonvolatile memory. The newest contender relies on a principle already at work in any computer that can burn a rewritable CD. A laser heats spots on an inner layer of the CD to between 300°C and 600°C for a few nanoseconds. That's all it takes to rearrange the atoms in that layer in a way that imprints one bit of digital data—the proverbial 1 or 0. Over the past decade, phase-change material, a class of silvery semiconductors about as soft as lead, has emerged as a star ingredient of write-your-own optical disks.
Now, researchers are striving to recast electronic memory chips by taking advantage of this material. Rather than accumulating electrons to store data, these upcoming chips instantly toggle patches of atoms between order and disorder.
What makes phase-change material particularly suitable for fast-memory devices is that it "can go from amorphous to crystalline [or back] with minimum motion of the atoms," notes Gary A. Gibson of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, Calif. Consequently, it can switch with lightning speed between arrangements that have dramatically different optical properties or electrical resistances. "This is really magic," Wuttig says.
Phase-change memory developers are resurrecting a decades-old invention that was eclipsed by the success of such materials in optical disks. In the 1960s, Stanford R. Ovshinsky of Energy Conversion Devices in Rochester Hills, Mich., made the seminal discoveries that revealed the potential for those materials to be a medium for electronic—as well as optical—data storage.
Scientific and commercial interest in the electronic version of the technology has exploded in the past few years, Ovshinsky says. That version is known as phase-change random access memory, or ovonic memory, in reference to Ovshinsky. Those who are most bullish about it, forecast that the technology could end up stealing not only flash-memory markets but also those now dominated by volatile-memory technologies, such as the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and static random access memory (SRAM) used by computers.
It's elementary
Although in the kitchen, making ice cubes and softening butter aren't the speediest operations, freezing and melting serve as the basis for the new form of fast computer memory. On microscopic scales, materials can freeze and melt at blinding speeds. Associating 1 or 0 with each of these states of matter provide the makings of memory.
Compounds known as chalcogenides have opened new vistas of data storage because of the changes they undergo when suddenly heated. At the heart of each of those compounds is one or more of such elements as sulfur, selenium, and tellurium—which appear in oxygen's column of the periodic table—combined with other semiconducting or metal-like elements such as germanium, indium, and antimony.
In optical disks, a laser's heat switches a chalcogenide patch between an orderly crystalline form and a more disordered, amorphous one. Because the mirrorlike crystalline patches bounce light in a given direction than the somewhat translucent, amorphous patches do, a detector in a CD or DVD player can almost flawlessly discern which bits are 1s and which are Os.
So,....Where can I get me some?
So smaller, larger capacity MP3 players? Lighter, thinner laptops?
Can an MP3 player possibly be smaller than an iPod Shuffle?
BIT BY BIT. Even low currents heat thin metallic vanes in this array of phase-change memory cells viewed by an electron microscope. Unobstructed vanes abruptly heat adjacent areas (arrows) of the phase-change material called GST and cause rapid atomic rearrangements between amorphous and crystalline states, representing bits 0 and 1, respectively. Pellizzer/STMicroelectronics
GOING THROUGH A PHASE. Diagrams depict a phase transition within the chalcogenide alloy layer (red) of a phase-change-memory cell. A pulse of electric current through that material and gray metal regions around it changes the material from crystalline (left) to amorphous (right). H. Dieker/RWTH Aachen
Qimonda memory technology firm is based in Germany and Macronix is a "non-volatile" memory company located in Taiwan.
Bump for later read.
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Macronix is a leading provider of innovative Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) solutions. Utilizing state of the art technology in our cutting edge fabrication facilities, we offer a wide range of NOR Flash and Mask ROM products across various densities. Through strong relationships with our customers, we continue to develop pioneering products for consumer and enterprise applications. The company is poised to increase market share and continues to expand our presence as the #1 Mask ROM supplier in the world.
The processor is gonna be inside the Big Buttons at this rate....
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Qimonda in a nutshell
Qimonda AG is the second largest global supplier of DRAM memory products (Ranking first half of the calendar year 2006 according to the industry research firm Gartner Dataquest). Following the carve out from Infineon Technologies AG on May 1st, 2006, Qimonda went public at the New York Stock Exchange on August 9th, 2006. The company generated net sales of €3.81 billion in its 2006 financial year and has approximately 12,000 employees worldwide. Qimonda has access to five 300mm manufacturing sites on three continents and operates five major R&D facilities, including its lead R&D center in Dresden. The company is a leading supplier of DRAM products to PC and server manufacturers and is increasingly focusing on products for graphics, mobile and consumer applications as well using its power saving trench technology
Wouldn't it be nice if we could somehow use all these new technologies to win the WOT?
"25 MHz is as fast as I'll ever need."
My words, 1990.
This will be a flashy, cool way to de-sensitize people to the whole idea of having microchips implanted in their body.
"Dude. Righteous."
"A 10 MB hard drive? You'd never fill that up!" (1982)
The 1.44 Meg floppy was killer compared to the 720 K!
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