Shift Register Counter

electronic thousand times faster and able to retain data for one hundred thousand years

Ritesh Agarwal, Se-Ho Lee and Jung Yeonwoong have developed a self-assembling nanowire of germanium antimony telluride, a phase-change material that switches between amorphous and crystalline structures, the key to read and write computer memory. The fabrication of nanoscale devices, roughly 100 atoms in diameter, was performed without conventional lithography, the manufacturing process that uses a rather blunt harsh chemicals and often produces unusable materials with space limitations, size and efficiency.

Instead of conventional lithography, the researchers used self-assembly, a process in which chemical reactants crystallize at lower temperatures through the action of nanocatalysts metal to spontaneously form nanowires of 30-50 nm in diameter and 10 micrometers long, and then fabricated memory devices on silicon substrates.

The test results showed an extremely lower power consumption for data encoding (0.7 mW per bit). They have also shown that the writing, erasing and retrieval (50 nanoseconds) is a thousand times faster than conventional Flash memory. And even suggest that the device will not lose data after 100,000 years of use, all with the potential to realize non-volatile memory devices with densities of the order of terabits.

This new form of memory represents a potential revolution in the way we access and store information.

The phase-change memory in general, is characterized by a read / write faster, better durability and simpler construction compared with other technologies such as Flash memory. The challenge has been to reduce the size of phase change materials by conventional lithographic techniques without damaging their useful properties. The phase-change nanowires, as created by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, provide a useful strategy to achieve new reports that provide an ideal control of stored data efficiently and lasting several orders of magnitude higher than current technologies.

Similar A Denis Milani

Improve the ability to write and store data in electronic devices

Today, many computers use dynamic random access memory (DRAM in English), in which each unit of binary digital information, or bit, is stored in a separate capacitor in an integrated circuit. Bode's experiment focused on Magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM for its acronym in English), which store information in magnetic storage elements consisting of two ferromagnetic layers between which is sandwiched a thin non-magnetic separator. While a of the two layers remains polarized in a constant direction, the other layer is polarized by applying an external magnetic field in the same direction as the top layer (for a "0") or in the opposite direction (for a " 1 ").

Commonly, MRAM are switched by magnetic fields. As has reduced the size of the bit in each successive generation of computers to accommodate more memory in the same physical area, has increased the vulnerability to errors. In this adverse situation, the magnetic field can switch the magnetization of the bit not only objective but also that of its neighboring bits. Using the tip of the microscope STM, which has the capacity to resolve structures down to a single atom, the scientists were able to eliminate this condition.

Hackmy Sidekick 09 In Writing

IBM announces super

IBM has announced a milestone in the development of technology for future microprocessors. The technology means that small copper semiconductor installed on the core processors will soon be replaced with optical connections. So, instead of electrical impulses, it will use light signals to exchange data in the processor. This will make such devices are one hundred times faster, while power consumption is only 10% with respect to current models.

According to IBM, the technology will result in the production of embedded processors by tens of thousands of cores, which may provide the same processing power than current super computers. In the words of IBM, it will be "a kind of computer you use the same power a small lamp.

The idea is not new, but this is the first time that IBM researchers have created a prototype a small functional modulator that converts electrical signals into light and vice versa. The modulator has a size between 100 to 1000 times smaller than previous prototypes.

IBM will use its own processor Cell, PlayStation 3 as an example. The issue contains 15 processor cores on a single chip. Cell processors of the future will contain from 100 to 1000 kernels, while media have a capacity 100 times higher than today.