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Hardware Technology

Nanotube Non-Volatile Memory Entering Production 242

Posted by michael from the nano-nano dept.
hovermike writes "Nantero and LSI Logic are expected to announce that nanotube non-volatile memory will be going into production, at least as far as the NY Times is concerned. Nanotubes have been discussed previously, Nanotube Applications..., and Buckminsterfullerene..., but I'm certainly surprised something like this has moved into production this quickly. Could this be the ultimate 'bubble' memory?" Reader hovermike writes "The press release can be found at the Nantero website. I'm looking forward to only needing one memory card to store all the 5Mbit pictures that I'll take for the rest of my life."
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Nanotube Non-Volatile Memory Entering Production More

Nanotube Non-Volatile Memory Entering Production

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  • Press release, sans PDF (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:26PM (#9367958)
    I have never understood why companies would release text information exclusively in PDF format. So here you go... and since I learned my lesson [slashdot.org] about Karma Whoring, I'll post AC. No troll text, I promise.

    For Immediate Release Contact: Suzanne Gibbons-Neff
    SGN Public Relations & Marketing
    (203) 656-0833/ Suzanne@nantero.com
    Nantero, Inc. Announces Carbon Nanotube Technology Development Project with LSI Logic
    Woburn, MA - June 7, 2004. Nantero, Inc. announced today that it is teaming with LSI Logic Corporation (NYSE: LSI) to develop semiconductor process technology, expediting the effective utilization of carbon nanotubes in CMOS fabrication.
    The joint development project is taking place at LSI Logics Gresham (Oregon) manufacturing campus, which is capable of process R&D down to the 65nm node.
    The high electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and tensile strength of carbon nanotubes make them highly attractive for electronic device applications. These properties enable performance breakthroughs both through incorporation into existing semiconductor products and in the development of next generation products.
    "LSI Logic has all of the necessary ingredients to accelerate the development of carbon nanotubes in CMOS: a strong focus on innovation, a highly qualified engineering team, and a world-class fab, said Greg Schmergel, Nanteros co-founder and CEO. "All of these factors and more makes LSI Logic an ideal partner for us in developing Nanteros carbon nanotube technology for high-volume manufacturing.
    Nanteros proprietary processes for the use of carbon nanotubes are CMOS-compatible and are presently under development at LSI Logics Gresham semiconductor manufacturing campus. The LSI Logic facility was recognized by Semiconductor International magazine as Fab of the Year for 2002.
    "LSI Logic has and continues to focus its process technology R&D efforts to solving technology challenges, such as the issues associated with low-k dielectrics, said Richard Schinella, LSI Logic vice president of Wafer Process R&D. "Teaming with Nantero, LSI Logic is applying its silicon integration skills to realizing the potential of carbon nanotubes in advanced CMOS manufacturing.
    About Nantero
    Nantero is a nanotechnology company using carbon nanotubes for the development of next-generation semiconductor devices. Nantero itself is developing NRAM -a high-density nonvolatile random access storage device. The potential applications for the nonvolatile storage device Nantero is developing are extensive and include the ability to enable instant-on computers and to replace the memory in devices such as cell phones, MP3 players, digital
    cameras, and PDAs, as well as applications in the networking arena. NRAM can be manufactured for both standalone and embedded memory applications. Nantero is also working with licensees on the development of additional applications of Nanteros core nanotube-based technology.
    About LSI Logic
    LSI Logic Corporation (NYSE: LSI) is a leading designer and manufacturer of communications, consumer and storage semiconductors for applications that access, interconnect and store data, voice and video. In addition, the company supplies storage network solutions for the enterprise. LSI Logic is headquartered at 1621 Barber Lane, Milpitas, CA 95035. http://www.lsilogic.com

    • Re:Press release, sans PDF (Score:5, Interesting)

      by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:46PM (#9368816)
      Because they don't like handicapped people, especially the blind.. I recently attended a seminar on web access for the disabled, and it was an eye opener. There is no good tools (screenreaders) to read PDF's, and adobe has had their project on the back burner for the last few years.. I have now dropped most of the PDF use at our company.
      • Can't you just convert it with pdf2ps, then ps2ascii, and read it from that?

        PDF is an open standard with a published spec... it can't be that hard to make a screenreader for it.

        • Re:Press release, sans PDF (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Cow herd ( 2036 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @03:25PM (#9369186) Homepage
          Er... PNG, GIF and JPEG all have published specs... I have yet to see a screen reader that will look at one and say "It's a picture of a bird". :-P

          All smartass-ness aside though, this is a big problem with PDF's, is that alot of them don't use text inside, but rather scanned images of text. This makes PDF accessibility a huge issue.

          • Re:Press release, sans PDF (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @04:02PM (#9369535)
            There's PDFs and there's PDFs. It's a convenient document format for many uses. It's great for distributing documents that have been generated on a word processor or typesetting program, and for documents like these, there should be no problem converting it to plain-text. PDFs have also been used a lot for scanned text. However, this is a totally different case than the former. There's an existing document on paper, and someone wants to digitize it so it can be distributed on the web. They could turn it into a big pile of GIFs, PNGs, or JPGs, or they could make it into one PDF. Do you have a way to screen-read scanned images? If not, then you have absolutely nothing to complain about, because in this case PDF is only serving as a convenient encapsulation method (it provides thumbnails, bookmarks, table of contents, etc.). So if those people didn't use PDF, they'd have to provide a zipfile of PNGs or something, which would totally suck.

            Maybe you should try OCR software. What are you going to complain about next? That digital cameras and digital photos aren't accessible to blind people?
            • I'm not blind, by my co-workers little boy is. I've spent some time with him, trying to get a 10 year old blind boy on the internet. That is difficult enough.. The real bitch is that many government offices, local, state, and fed, only produce PDF's for things. That is their standard. There are ways to convert PDF's, mostly involving linux, an OS that I love, but Linux is definately not set up for the blind. Now, try to imagine researching laws on discrimination of the handicapped, when all the govern
          • All smartass-ness aside though, this is a big problem with PDF's, is that alot of them don't use text inside, but rather scanned images of text. This makes PDF accessibility a huge issue.

            And then there are equipment manufacturers who turn on the obfuscation flag in their User Manual PDFs so that you can't copy-n-paste a relevant section out to send to someone. (Sony does this with their AIT tape drive manuals!)
      • There is no good tools (screenreaders) to read PDF's, and adobe has had their project on the back burner for the last few years.. I have now dropped most of the PDF use at our company.

        I'm not sure what this has to do with nanotubes, but...

        If the PDF is a scanned document, then it's really just an image file, like a GIF, and not an inherent problem with PDF. A Word document with a giant GIF of the text embedded would have the same problem, so why would the issue be any different?

        If the PDF is genera

  • NYT article text (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:26PM (#9367960)
    Nantero, a start-up developing memory chips using nanotechnology, and LSI Logic, a leading maker of specialty microchips, are expected to announce today that they have transferred Nantero's technology to a standard semiconductor production line.

    Nantero is creating NRAM, a high-density nonvolatile random access memory chip, which it hopes will replace existing forms of memory. Its technology, using cylindrical molecules of carbon known as nanotubes, will be used on a production line in LSI's semiconductor factory in Gresham, Ore.

    Carbon nanotubes are among the new forms of carbon, known as fullerenes, whose discovery helped ignite interest in manipulation of materials at the molecular level, the field known as nanotechnology. Fullerenes consist of carbon atoms arranged in patterns resembling the nodes of the geodesic domes designed by Buckminster Fuller. Nanotubes, which researchers first created in 1991, consist of single- or multiwalled cylinders that can be less than 10 nanometers wide. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.

    The transition from laboratory to production line took more than nine months, the companies said, adding that considerable work remains to improve the chips.

    "But it's following the same type of road map as any other semiconductor product," said Norman L. Armour, vice president and general manager of the LSI factory in Gresham. Mr. Armour said that processors embedded with carbon nanotube memories in place of static random access memory, or SRAM, could be supplied commercially from the factory's pilot line next year if no problems developed.

    If so, analysts said, such devices could emerge as one of the first products to exploit something other than the extraordinary strength of carbon nanotubes.

    The nanotubes are up to 100 times as strong as steel and one-sixth its weight, qualities that have quickly led to their use in products like tennis rackets and automotive plastics, where they are mixed with other materials to improve their performance.

    Researchers have also shown that the nanotubes have extraordinary electrical and magnetic characteristics. Recent reports, for example, have highlighted their ability to be quickly altered from metal-like conductors into semiconductors and back by applying magnetic fields.

    Such novel qualities have helped make them a powerful symbol of nanotechnology's potential, but except as strengtheners nanotubes have proved difficult to bring to market. The challenges have included preventing clumping and the tendency of the simplest manufacturing approaches to produce mixes of single-walled and multiwalled tubes with varying characteristics.

    Nantero's design applies charges to groups of single-walled nanotubes suspended over an electrode. Applying opposite charges to the tubes and the electrode causes the tubes to bend down, creating a junction that represents a 1. Applying like charges forces them apart into the 0 state. As with all digital memory, NRAM stores data as a pattern of 1's and 0's.

    Carbon nanotube memories could sharply improve the performance of cellphones, laptop computers and other electronic devices. Like today's flash and SRAM memories, carbon nanotube designs can maintain data when power is turned off, an advantage over dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, memory chips, which must constantly be refreshed. But it can operate considerably faster and on less power than flash memory, and is much cheaper and more compact than SRAM.

    Analysts caution that Nantero's carbon nanotubes face plenty of competition. Memories that hold their charge are crucial to improving the performance and design flexibility of a wide range of electronic products, and thus have become the most profitable and fastest-growing segment of the $35 billion memory market, according to Radu Andrei, a Web-Feet Research analyst based in Dallas. That is attracting heavy investment in technologies that could replace flash and SRAM.

    "I count around 30 technology variations trying to get a piece of that pie," Mr. Andrei said. Among them are I.B.M., Intel, Motorola and numerous start-ups. Flash memory is now so inexpensive, he added, that innovators will have a hard time displacing it from all but the most demanding applications even if they surpass it technically.

  • Only for so long (Score:5, Funny)

    by Luguber123 ( 203502 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:27PM (#9367966) Homepage
    "I'm looking forward to only needing one memory card to store all the 5Mbit pictures that I'll take for the rest of my life"

    With that said, I'm sure they are taken out of production again :)

  • Great (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EduardoFonseca ( 703176 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:27PM (#9367968) Homepage
    Great stuff. But, is it reliable? This technology is becoming mainstream too quickly.

    Does anyone have more data on this?

    • Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)

      by errxn ( 108621 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:30PM (#9368009) Homepage Journal
      Well, if it's not, you can always say that your memory "went down the nanotubes."

    • Re:Great (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Eviscero ( 675126 )
      And what kind of storage vs space as well as bandwidth can we expect out of memory developed with this techology?

    • Re:Great (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:04PM (#9368376) Homepage
      I'm thrilled that it's becoming mainstream so quickly. Because even if the company utterly fails to deliver a product that costs a reasonable amount, the simple fact of orders/production of bulk nanotubes will help drive CNT prices down and encourage a lot more CNT research, especially on the critical issues of size, purity, and consistancy of nanotube forms.

      Space elevators, ultracheap rockets, massive bridges, giant skyscrapers.... here we come! (ok, perhaps not that fast... but it's a good start. ;) ).
      • even if the company utterly fails to deliver a product that costs a reasonable amount
        No such thing.... There's always military uses where cost is not a factor!
    • First visit this site http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?do c ument_id=6311
      The technology for "3rd" generation nanotech, which is to include 3d chips such as memory, is not supposed to really evolve until around 2010. Projections for nanotech seem to a bit lacking.
      It is projected that by 2020 we will be able to mimic molecules with nanotech thus possibley mimicing life artificially(which is kinda scary). From reading quite a few articles on the subject that is what I have been able to find.

  • Quickly? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by afidel ( 530433 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:28PM (#9367975)
    I was doing expirements of buckminsterfullerenes back in 1996-97, it shouldn't be suprising that a superior material made it to market in 8-10 years after the start of expiremental evaluation. I doubt it took that long to develop nylon, rayon, or any of the other wonder fibers into products for sale.

    • Re:Quickly? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by laigle ( 614390 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:32PM (#9368036)
      True, but there is a great deal of difference between developing the material and developing the application. Just making the nanotubes doens't allow you to make a memory card out of them. I would be rather interested in how much research has been put into memory-holding, write/read times, memory density, interference and the like before deciding to switch over to NRAM.

      • Making the bucky balls into memory is fairly simple. All they need to do is string a few of them on a tube, line the tubes up in a nano-frame, and use nano-fingers to move them back and forth. Witness, the first IP on the nano-abacus.

    • I was doing expirements of buckminsterfullerenes back in 1996-97

      really?! well way back in the stone age, I was experimenting with rocks! and we were glad to have them too!

    • Re:Quickly? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by No Such Agency ( 136681 )
      I think nylon was developed during WWII, wasn't it? That must have been a big boost to rapid innovation cycles. All we need is another big war, to be fought entirely with computers... hmm...
      • All we need is another big war, to be fought entirely with computers

        The war on spam isnt big enough for you?

      • Re:Quickly? (Score:5, Funny)

        by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:02PM (#9368360)
        Lets invade Canada. We can use the French Canadians for medical experiments, and We'll appropriate enough maple syrup to pay for the invasion. They have WMD (celine dion) and are more then willing to use it.

        • Re:Quickly? (Score:3, Funny)

          by Minwee ( 522556 )
          Who knows? May be you might even win this time.

  • Another new memory (Score:5, Interesting)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:28PM (#9367977) Journal
    STM recently announced [linuxelectrons.com] that they are entering the production phase for PRAM, or phase-change memory. This is important because PRAM is nonvolatile and has the potential to be written and read much faster than flash. There will come a day when DRAM will go away and we'll be left with extremely fast and simple NVRAM for main memory and possibly even archival storage. It'd be really great if there was only ONE memory in a system. At this point, most high-performance CPUs are mostly cache memory anyway.

    • Re:Another new memory (Score:5, Funny)

      by ron_ivi ( 607351 ) <sdotno@cheapcomp ... s.com minus poet> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:38PM (#9368114)
      "There will come a day when DRAM will go away and we'll be left with extremely fast and simple NVRAM for main memory and possibly even archival storage."

      Then not even rebooting will "fix" a MS-Windows computer, and everyone'll go Linux. :)

    • Re:Another new memory (Score:4, Funny)

      by Paulrothrock ( 685079 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:39PM (#9368132) Homepage Journal
      Yes, but will you have to zap your PRAM?

      Ugh...

      • Undoubtably in the future, high-performance PC's will have turbo-charged double PRAMS's.

    • Re:Another new memory (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mz6 ( 741941 ) * on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:46PM (#9368208) Journal
      "There will come a day when DRAM will go away and we'll be left with extremely fast and simple NVRAM for main memory and possibly even archival storage"

      This is obviously not the right way if you are worried about passwords being found years later on hard disks, as was mentioned in previous slashdot article.

      • This is obviously not the right way if you are worried about passwords being found years later on hard disks, as was mentioned in previous slashdot article.

        Zeroing and/or encrypting the password buffer is the right solution there, as the article pointed out.

    • Maybe, but probably not in interchangeable packages. The bus-length dependent transmission times mean that the cache needs to be on the processor, the main memory nearby and hopefully user upgradable, the graphics memory on the graphics coprocessor, which as a unit should be upgradable due to shorter dev cycles, etc etc.

      There could be some benefit in terms of R&D though if the basic memory design were more interchangeable (i.e. as opposed to SRAM versus DRAM versus Flash versus...)
    • Who's that, pushing the PRAM?

      The nanny of course.

    • Yeah.

      It brings about the possibility that modern laptops might finally be able to become truly portable and therefore compete with the 8-bit laptops (model 100/102/200, z88, amstrad nc100/200, NEC 8500, Starlet, etc.) from a couple decades ago... instant on, 20 hours battery life, run on alkalines, more rugged, etc.
    • Go away? Only *ONE* memory? I think not.

      While at times, having only one memory seems wonderful from a performance or code simplicity standpoint, there are many fault-tolerant and/or recovery techniques that can be utilized by having at least two different memory technologies in a 'system'.

      In other words, don't put all your eggs in one basket.

  • I wouldn't mind this in my PDA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) <seebert42@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:28PM (#9367978) Homepage Journal
    Sounds like it would be lower power than flash memory- and if they can get the manufacturing process cheaper, this could mean finally having say a 40 GB memory card on my PDA- copy my entire desktop to the PDA for mobile applications.

  • Toxicology (Score:5, Informative)

    by morcheeba ( 260908 ) * on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:28PM (#9367980) Journal
    I'm looking forward to only needing one memory card to store all the 5Mbit pictures that I'll take for the rest of my life.

    It seems that a 1GB nano-tube based memory card should last the rest of your life [oupjournals.org]. Of course, a silicon-based memory card to last the rest of your life would have to be much larger.

  • Life's worth of pictures (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sjonke ( 457707 ) * on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:28PM (#9367987) Journal
    "I'm looking forward to only needing one memory card to store all the 5Mbit pictures that I'll take for the rest of my life."

    And to losing them all in one fell swoop?

    • Yeah.. I was thinking that exact same thing. Why would you store everything all in one place like that?
    • This would not necessarily preclude a backup/disaster recovery strategy.

      Is having data spread across 1,000,000 floppy disks...or 1,000 CD's more secure from loss or corruption?

      I should think not.

      If a backup can be generated in a short period of time, have persistance (not degrade over time tape media) and be re-writable ... a compact media like this would be fantastic.

  • More details please (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mr. Sketch ( 111112 ) * <`mister.sketch' `at' `gmail.com'> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:29PM (#9367988)
    The articles seemed weak on details, does anyone know what sizes of memory these will be available in? Are we talking megs of memory (like current flash cards), gigs of memory (to replace hard drives), or teras of memory (for the future)?

  • Toxicity? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:29PM (#9367989) Homepage Journal
    Last I heard certain nanotubes were toxic to the environment. Does anyone know whether these suffer from the same issue?
    • Depends- are you planning on shredding your memory cards anytime soon?
    • So is motor oil and about a thousand other things you keep around the house every day.

      • Re:Toxicity? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by th3axe ( 690230 ) <gorrillas@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:00PM (#9368346)
        From what I remember, the concern about nanotubes (as well as other nano-materials) is that we don't have a great deal of experience with them yet. Motor oil has been around for quite some time and isn't a truly "new" material, while nanotubes are. The unique properties of the material brings with it both benefits and possible problems. Given our history with cool, new stuff, it would be wise to see what possible issues might arise.

        I'm no Luddite, but I don't think it's a bad idea to work through the lifecycle of this type of material. If it decays, how does it decay? What happens to it or its components when it does decay? Can we just just toss it into landfills or does it count as hazardous waste? Lots of questions, maybe they've been answered, but I don't recall there being a great deal of study on it.

        That said though, it's a cool thing that we're gonna see this stuff in real life.

    • Re:Toxicity? (Score:2, Funny)

      by kilocomp ( 234607 )
      The radiation from the wireless card or CRT you have should neturalize it.
    • Nanotubes are as toxic as Gen-modified ogranisms... they pose a potential thread to the current known environment... we just don't know if the thread is real or not, and in what way.

      The thread comes from the size of nanotubes. Nanotubes are so small, that they can slip past your skin and later pierce a cell. Then within the cell nanotubes might influence how the cell reproduces... namly the DNA could be changed. Result: random mutation and possibly cancer.

      That's what the Nanotube-danger gossip tells. Fact

      • Re:Toxicity? (Score:5, Informative)

        by MenTaLguY ( 5483 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:11PM (#9368459) Homepage

        Fact is, I haven't seen a single test with animals or smaller organisms exposed to nano-tech.

        hellooooooooo? [oupjournals.org]

        (courtesy of morcheeba [slashdot.org])

        • From MenTaLguY's linked article:

          These results show that, for the test conditions described here and on an equal-weight basis, if carbon nanotubes reach the lungs, they are much more toxic than carbon black and can be more toxic than quartz, which is considered a serious occupational health hazard in chronic inhalation exposures.

          Uh-Oh.

          I guess this is to be expected -- the ends of nanotubes are probably pretty sharp (relatively speaking), and would dig into lung tissue fairly easily. The people who w

    • Last I heard certain nanotubes were toxic to the environment. Does anyone know whether these suffer from the same issue?

      Rachels environment and health weekly had a three [rachel.org] part [rachel.org] series [rachel.org] looking at dangers of new technologies, including nanotech.

      Apparently, studies on lab rats show that small particles don't harm them as much as very small ones, and that nanoparticles are worst of all.

      It probably won't be a big problem for consumers, assuming the end product is stable; I'm more concerned for those producing it

    • Re:Toxicity? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Goldenhawk ( 242867 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @04:10PM (#9369618) Homepage
      Last *I* heard, eating the silicon chips from inside a flash disk was ALSO harmful to my health. Just like drinking the various chemicals used to produce them.

      Okay, okay, it's a bit more complicated than that, but I have a hard time getting worried about nanotech just because it's nanotech. After all, the nanotech will be embedded within carrier material, just like all the current chips. Just as with most modern technology, the manufacturing process isn't necessarily safe for bystanders, and requires careful attention. Same for the disposal process.

      Nothing new here.
      • I don't have any issues with nanotech, as long proper environmental issues are taken into account. Things like PCB [osu.edu]s were banned because when they entered the environment could cause problems. This is one reason why some countries are now requiring computer companies to take it open themselves to recycle the computers at the end of their life. The idea is the computer manufacturers will make a better effor to make computers economic, and safer, to recycle if they have to deal with it.
  • Anyone know much about these things? Speed? Power consumption advantages/disadvantages? This just seems like a VP presentation spew about "we're using this. good day.".

  • No way (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:33PM (#9368055) Homepage Journal
    I'm looking forward to only needing one memory card to store all the 5Mbit pictures that I'll take for the rest of my life.

    I don't empty my 8MB card to the computer often enough already, so if the card never got full the family pictures wouldn't get seen by anyone else until I died and someone else inherited my camera.

  • How long before... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by farzadb82 ( 735100 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:37PM (#9368112)
    Hardware vendors use this technolog to bring us a truely "instant on" feature to our laptops and PCs ?
    • Shortly after MS goes out of business.

  • 5Mbit or 5Mpixel? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tji ( 74570 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:48PM (#9368245)
    I'm looking forward to only needing one memory card to store all the 5Mbit pictures that I'll take for the rest of my life

    5Mbit pictures? 5Mb = 640KB, so you can already store 6,250 pictures on a 4GB microdrive. Not a lifetime's amount, but quite a long time at my rate of picture taking.

    I suspect he meant 5 Mpixel, which would be much bigger than 640KB each.

  • Vaporware? Not on LSI Logic site (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:49PM (#9368249) Homepage
    There's no mention of this on the LSI Logic site. [lsilogic.com]

    Nantero isn't publicly held, though, so this isn't a stock hype.

  • If only ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @01:59PM (#9368340) Homepage Journal
    only needing one ... more people thought like this, about lots of things.

    but alas, what will more likely happen is 'consumericans' and other dis-world orders will 'drive the demand' up for super hi-res video, and we'll all be having HDTV Home Video dumps to sony-marketed 'nano-bricks' ... and you'll still be needing piles and piles of 'media' around, for those moments.

    things will just get 'prettier' and 'waaay bigger', the functions will stay the same ... and so will the markets.

  • some more information (Score:5, Informative)

    by vmircea ( 730382 ) <vmircea@tERDOSjhsst.edu minus math_god> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:03PM (#9368375) Homepage
    Check out some of these sites:

    Nano Dot Article [nanodot.org]
    Tech Review [technologyreview.com]
    A neat simulation [msu.edu]
    WordIQ [wordiq.com]

    These all do a good deal to help explain / show you some interesting things. Give them a look-see.

  • Are memory futures down? (Score:3, Informative)

    by 192939495969798999 ( 58312 ) <[info] [at] [devinmoore.com]> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:05PM (#9368385) Homepage Journal
    I'll believe it when the memory futures market nose-dives. If I go to Micro Center, and regular RAM chip prices are down 20% or more across the board, then nanotube memory is DEFINITELY coming to market like, soon.

    No, I'm not using the 80's translation server, I really do talk like this... sorry, I lived in the valley in the 80's (when I was little) and it totally warped my speech.

  • I think the article is misleading (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SteroidMan ( 782859 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:16PM (#9368513)
    It says nothing about being ready to mass-produce the technology. In fact, the way I read the article, the partnership is so that they can try to create any sort of working process that is even remotely cost-effective and works reliably. This is a long way from commercial viability. Without this partnership, Nantero has no ability to fab this kind of technology at any volume on their own. It sounds as if they are using the joint partership to go hunting for funding. I don't even see a concrete product announcement

  • Space is never enough (Score:5, Insightful)

    by galo_2099 ( 555243 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @02:39PM (#9368735) Homepage
    If you have space to take all your 5 Megapixels photos for the rest of your life, you'll start taking 50 Megapixels photos. If you still have more space, you'll start making videos.
    Just bring the space, and we'll use it!

  • Has no one ever seen a Tech Press Release? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tristan7 ( 222645 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @03:56PM (#9369484)
    The article says develop semiconductor process technology. This is MARKETING people. Nothing has happened, no technology has even passed between the two companies. It's a deal between the companies to both share the expenses of brining this to market. But the reason it's short on details is becaues there aren't any.
  • Ok, so we've got our new NRAM machine. When it's powered on the (N)RAM is the same as when it was powered off, but the CPU and all external units (networking, graphics, printer etc.) will have to be re-initialized. Is it feasible for the current Linux kernel to exploit these features to the max with a few patches, or is a thorough redesign needed?

    What should software be like, when "save" and "save as" make little sense since the file stays in (N)RAM anyway? Wouldn't "saving your document" be replaced wi

  • OOPS! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ca1v1n ( 135902 ) <snook.guanotronic@com> on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @06:05PM (#9371160)
    Ummm... I wish my tennis racket was made of nanotubes. I could sell it and never work again. Take the article with a huge grain of salt, because they've confused nanotubes with graphite fiber.

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