Researchers Print Electronic Memory On Paper 78
MTorrice (2611475) writes Electronics printed on paper promise to be cheap, flexible, and recyclable, and could lead to applications such as smart labels on foods and pharmaceuticals or as wearable medical sensors. Many engineers have managed to print transistors and solar cells on paper, but one key component of a smart device has been missing—memory. Now a group of researchers has developed a method that uses ink-jet technology to print resistive random access memory on an ordinary letter sized piece of paper. The memory is robust: Engineers could bend the device 1,000 times without any loss of performance.
The memory is not yet very dense, but could be: "Each silver dot they printed was approximately 50 microns across and separated from its neighbor by 25 microns, so each bit of memory is 100 microns on a side. At that size, a standard 8.5- by 11-inch piece of paper can hold 1 MB of memory. Der-Hsien Lien, the paper's lead author, says existing ultrafine ink-jet technology can produce dots less than 1 micron across, which would allow the same piece of paper to hold 1 gigabyte. Reading and writing the bits takes 100 to 200 microseconds"
Old news... (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, but you've been cheating by using wide-ruled paper and double-spacing.
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Pretty sure I was passing 1Mb per sheet when I was 9.
When I got assigned sentences when I got in trouble I would write them as small as possible to be a little jerk.
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Should that be mega bit or mega byte?
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You must be a blast at parties.
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Ever scanned handwritten documents?
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How many colors are your 7727 characters, and do they include Unicode support?
Density (Score:5, Interesting)
What's the current density of machine-readable written information on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper?
I'm going to guess more than a meg.
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What's the current density of read/write randomly-accessible information?
Re:Density (Score:4, Interesting)
Paper is already at least WORM, and depending on your format, randomly-accessible.
I don't suggest that this isn't interesting, I'm just asking a question about machine readable printed information density.
How many distinct characters or pixels can we reliably scan in from an 8.5x11 sheet of paper? What density of information allows us to have 4 or 8 or 16 or 256 colors of pixels?
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Let's assume you carve your page up into 'pixels'. If each 'pixel' is one bit (2 colors or on or off) then you would have to have pixels of 100 microns (.1mm) on a side to have the same information density as this process. If each 'pixel' is 4 bits (16 colors) then your pixels would only have to be .2mm on a side to retain the same information density. I kind of doubt you could distinguish between 256 different colors reliably enough for computer reading of data under varying light conditions but if we assu
Re:Density (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think most people understand the application for this.
Printing RFIDs has existed for many years now (at least 10 that I know of) and is mostly used for quickly scanning contents of a box without having to handle each item inside of it. It is also used to track inventory leaving an area (e.g. a tool storage room).
Adding memory to this equation means you can store data on the paper until the transaction is complete. I can't come up with a reason for this on the spot but I can imagine there are processes that could benefit from it.
From a security standpoint you could store an encrypted password on the paper... Much easier than having to type a 256 character passcode.
Re:Density (Score:4, Insightful)
But once you can uniquely identify each object (with a simple bar code or RFID), it's easy to associate any amount of information with it, in a database somewhere. The more ubiquitous network connectivity becomes, the more location transparency you have, and the less need to store information directly in a specific place.
In short, this is a floppy disk, but on a paper backing.
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Yes but there are situations where you have equipment with no access to networks. In those cases (and I realize it's less and less common) there is value in having the ability to store dynamic content on paper.
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Um... assuming 1/4" nonprintable margin, a regular 300 dpi printer can do 8 * 10.5 * 300 * 300 = 7,560,000 bits = 945,000 Bytes in black and white. Multiply by 4 for 600 dpi or by 16 for 1200 dpi. Then multply by 4 for CYMK, and by another 16 if your printer can do 4-bit color.
8 * 10.5 * 1200 * 1200 * 4 * 16 / 8 bits = 967,680,000 Bytes for a 1200 dpi 4-bit color laser printer. That's nearly 1GB.
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We can obviously scan well above 1200dpi, but determining each printed pixel's true nature reading 1200dpi ink-on-paper would be challenging.
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And if dpi directly translated to individual sprayed dots, that would be useful. Inkjet printers spray microdroplets that aren't strictly locked to the pixel grid. And CMYK are not all perfectly aligned with one another.
Still, that inkjet printed page can't read itself. A circuit printed on the page could.
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Yeah, I was bothered by that, too. 8.5x11 paper is 603.22 cm^2, so we can fit roughly 6032200 100 micron^2 on the sheet, or about 736KB. Now, if it's really 75 microns on a side, the density goes up by 16/9 to 1309KB. Maybe they're leaving a margin? TFA gives the "100 micron" and "1MB" values, so it's not the poster but probably the reporter who made the mistake.
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Read/Write. This isn't simply printing.
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If you're working with a printed circuit (think a computer on a magazine page or a greeting card), it's useful if the silver dots can be read by the printed circuit without an additional machine or any (relatively) large equipment at all.
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Perhaps there are both em and en spaces between their dots :)
That's great (Score:3)
However, this technology will very probably disappear like so many others. Anyone remember the technology that allows you to store giga- to terrabytes of data on a few layers of Tesa strip? Read by laser without any moving parts, prototyped at a time when CDs were still the standard medium? Well, this never made it into a buyable product either.
My humble theory is that market forces do not always promote the best solution. After all, why should corporations put something new on the market if it would give them less opportunities to rip you off in the long run? :-(
The good news is that this technology has better chances of success than the Tesa strip solution, because ... ink cartridges! ;-)
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Ink? Nope. (Score:5, Funny)
because ... ink cartridges! ;-)
Think milk cartons. That sing joyful tunes and jingles when you open your fridge.
Packaging that remembers you - wherever you are.
Which will give you your very own personal discount cause it knows that your milk carton at home is only just opened, but it knows from your profile that you like a bargain.
Products will express you when you buy them, and sadness when you don't.
They will be your friends. They will know your favorite things.
They will love you like you were never loved by anyone else.
Your dog will be jealous. Your cat will try to kill them.
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I dread our future ad-riddled overlords.
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that is the creepiest thing i've read all day.
Products will express JOY when you buy them. (Score:2)
Although... they may express FOR you.
Like that box of condoms humming "Get Lucky" in your pocket all the time during your ride home.
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Oh and if any Intel engineers are reading this post, I'd love to hear what you think about that particular piece of genius.
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Totally creepy and wasteful, I couldn't believe it.
Marketing usually is.
On the other hand... People love [youtube.com] their singing [youtube.com] boxes. [youtube.com]
And you got to admit - it got you talking about it.
Just like the talking packaging of the future will talk to you. Hey! People love when Siri does it!
Just think of the joy of THAT from every shelve.
And of people greeting their detergents and talking to them on their way to register.
Transistors was there but memory was not? WTF (Score:3)
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This is resistive random access memory, which is non-volatile. Yes, with transistor you could have printer other forms or RAM before, but you would have to keep supplying power or that memory would erase itself.
GREAT IDEA! (Score:2, Funny)
Hey! We could load programs on paper cards and use them to batch install/run programs in the future. Or instead of 8.5 x 11 paper, we could make a continuous stream of paper, like a tape, to read/write data to. The future looks bright!
Magnetic strip? (Score:2)
Re: Magnetic strip? (Score:2)
Re:Magnetic strip? (Score:4, Insightful)
Audio tape is sequential access, not random access. The same thing with the magnetic strip. Usually this isn't a problem because the magnetic strip on your card contains a very small amount of information so it is quick to read the entire sequence but if you had to sequentially load just 16k of information from a tape it could take some time.
Ask anyone who had a home computer before floppy disks became available.
But what if... (Score:4, Funny)
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You can't photocopy it.
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Copyright lawyers have prepared the below flowchart to help identify what they will consider unauthorized copies or infringement that are potentially actionable:
Is it a day that ends in 'y'?
Then yes.
Is it a day that doesn't end in 'y'?
Then super yes.
When I can play Asteroids on the back of a box... (Score:4, Funny)
...it will be hard to get me to leave the breakfast table.
I'm seeing a whole line of Atari cereals, and a competing line of Mattel Electronics Intellicereals. Maybe get Alan Alda and George Plimpton's faces on the boxes to keep the kids away from Dad's stuff.
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It does seem that they nearly have all the ingredients to make a viable 8-bit computer on a (small) sheet of paper now. I guess an Atari 2600 could fit in a fairly small area with it's 128 bytes of RAM (1 cm^2) and other simple logic. This printed RAM access speed isn't great though - 200us is three orders of magnitude too slow compared to even the memory in those old computers. Hopefully shrinking these RAM dots will also improve speed.
3M (Score:3)
Well, if they come up with a scheme to encrypt the paper maybe it will finally be safe for all those lazy users to store their passwords on a post it note. Should be able to squeeze at least 640K onto a post it note, should be enough for anybody.
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Ink will cost more than a divorce.
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Divorce is expensive because it's worth it.
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Who else gets divorced? Unmarried people?
Dolt.
Save the trees! (Score:1)
Say goodbye to our forests if this tech should ever become widespread.
A whole MB? (Score:4, Funny)
640K should be enough for anyone.
We've had field-writable ROM paper for years (Score:2)
I can see the advantages of cheap, relatively-high-speed paper RAM but remember, we've had high-density paper ROM since the age of micro-fine printing, and low-density paper ROM since the invention of, well, paper.
We've also had very-slow-to-erase "eraseable ROM" on paper since the invention of the eraser.
In prehistoric times, we had it was low-density ROM on cave walls.
The rain ate my homework - honest! (Score:2)
compared to QR codes? (Score:1)
That way you always grab (potentially) current data.
Less expensive too.
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QR codes are write once and take a lot of processing power to read, the article is talking about reusable, electronically accessible memory.
my LASER's bigger than yours! (Score:2)
QR codes are write once and take a lot of processing power to read, the article is talking about reusable, electronically accessible memory.
Obviously written by someone without a powerful enough LASER.
All you need is a webcam, a LASER and proper archival media.
CHA [tvtropes.org]
Fencepost error! (Score:2)
Printed toilet paper. (Score:2)
It'll be awesome, Text messages reminding you to wipe more.