Researchers Achieve Amazing Memory Density 279
Mr. Fahrenheit writes in with a Wired story on research out of Arizona State, where researchers have "developed a low-cost, low-power computer memory that could put terabyte-sized thumb drives in consumers' pockets within a few years... The new memory technology — programmable metallization cell (PMC) — comes as current storage technologies are starting to reach their physical limits." PMC involves the on-demand creation of copper nano-wire bridges. It's said to promise memories that are 1/10 the cost and 1/1000 the power consumption of conventional Flash memory. Three memory manufacturers have licensed the technology and the first chips are expected on the market in 18 months.
And it will be released in 5 years (Score:4, Insightful)
Vaporware. (Score:3, Insightful)
Almost Infiniate? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like to know the exact number of cycles this will take, plus or minus a few million times.
The technology looks like it would eventual deplete the material used for the interconnect. But than again I am not a physicist.
Re:Vaporware. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Other specs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Cost vs. Price (Score:3, Insightful)
Read/write (especially WRITE) speed? (Score:4, Insightful)
But how come nobody's concerned aobut the the IO speed? I wouldn't be too concerned about reading, but if writing/rewriting requires real-time rebuilding of gates, wouldn't it be snail-slow?
The IO of even regular hard drives already becomes a significant factors as drives grow exponentially larger and speed stays the same as always. If this is even slower, it'd become a serious deterrent.
Re:Cost vs. Price (Score:2, Insightful)
For this, however, there is no similar mechanism. To most consumers it will just look like a normal flash drive and work like a normal flash drive. Joe Sixpack doesn't care about the technology, and probably doesn't even know flash dives have limited write cycles (not that he'll ever approach them). Unless the new drives offer more memory or a better price, there will be no reason to buy one.
Of course, in the embedded market, this would be huge due to reduced power consumption and write cycles (which eliminates the need for wear leveling). Also, for more extreme environments (I'm looking at you, space) the fact that this memory changes physically and doesn't simply hold charge (which is rather easily changed) is also a major plus. Even with these advantages, I doubt that there will be any sort of price inflation in these markets either since these buyers know what they're doing.
A politically incorrect question (Score:2, Insightful)
I know that type of arrangement may be common place today but I sure would like to follow the money trail.
Energy efficiency not meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Other specs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mac Time Machine - rsync for dummies (Score:3, Insightful)
rsync makes incremental backups?
-:sigma.SB
Re:Sorry to be a spoil-sport, but (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm, why? (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you are, well that's a hell of a lot faster and more convenient than burning 233 standard DVD-R's (about what it would take with non dual-sided discs) or writing the equivilent tape or network-based backup method. Heck, that beats out most disk-to-disk transfers.
New Game Delivery System (Score:4, Insightful)
That, and they'd be able to shrink down the size of game boxes again, from dvd size to, dare I say it, cigarette pack sized. Your next video game could be dispensed by a vending machine.
Re:Other specs? (Score:2, Insightful)
"RAID is not a replacement for backup."
"RAID is not a replacement for backup"
RAID does not protect you against rm -rf / , or another idiotware/malware.
Re:Other specs? (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's why I love you.
[he said "Wiener" filter, heh-heh]
Re:Other specs? (Score:3, Insightful)
I also get your point. RAID 1 is fault tolerance, not backup solution.