AlanBarber.Org
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
The future of RAM is in Nanotubes
New Scientist is reporting that a company called Nantero had succeded in creating a prototype RAM (Random Access Memory) chip using carbon nanotubes.They call it NRAM or Nanoscale Random Access Memory and the great thing about it is... In theory it will be able to hold much more data then conventional ram and be much faster. But that isn't it! The greatest feature is the fact that it will be non-volatile.
Non-volatile is just a fancy word for saying "doesn't loose it's data when the power gets turned off". See current ram is volatile and so whenever you loose power to the ram chips they forget what they were storing. This new type of ram could solve many of the issues with computers today.
Things like slow bootup times could be ended. Since the NRAM can hold data even with the power off you can leave the operation system loaded into the ram and soon as you turn on your machine the OS is ready and running. No time wasteed for bootup.
Simillary you would provide a safety-net to users from brownouts or complete blackouts. Say for example durring a storm lightning stikes and the power goes out. Now days your only protection is having a UPS Uninterupted Power Supply to give you time to save your files and shutdown. With NRAM in theory you would be able to get away with not having a UPS. If the power goes out and the computer dies you don't have to worry becuase the system will stay in the exact same state prior to shutdown. Soon as the power comes back on, you turn on the machine and it starts up right where you left off.
This new NRAM could also lead to the demise of harddrives in favor of SSD, Solid State Device, mass storage. Since the NRAM would hold data even with no power supplied you could build massive storrage units out of the ram to work like harddrives. These new "ram" drives could provide massive amounts of storage with huge performance advantages over current spining platter disc drives.
Current seek times for hard drives average anywhere from around 5ms for high end scsi drives to around 15ms for low end laptop drives. SSD based hard drives wold provide access times in the sub 1ms ranges.
Similarlly current trasfer speeds for hard drives are very poor. A standard IDE based drive used in most computers provides a burst rate of 133mbps with a sustained transfer rate of around 50mbps if your lucky. SSD based drives using the same IDE interface could provide burst rates of 133mbps with sustained rates of 133mbps too!
However, if SSD hard drives becuase a reality they could replace the need for convential ram and so you would create a special interface for the SSD drives so they would provide the same performance levels of ram. And this is where I would like to see the world go! A flat memory model where there is no such idea of having seperate memory for working on data and storage for keeping data when not in use. The system would just have memory and all the programs, data, and operating system are in this memory ready for use at anytime.
I guess I can only dream for now!
on 06/17/2003 at 11:20 AM
NRAM is great in theory. i have read many different articles on this subject due to a report ia m doing about it. NRAM is also unaffetced by strong magnetic fields and extreme temperature changes like hot and cold. add the fact that tey are 100 times stronger than steel and much more conductive than copper, nanotubes are an interesting way of producing the specified results. Anyways i am waiting for the day when Harddrives will no loner be an issue, and you will no longer worry about loosing reports you have been writing or work you were doing. NRAM is a wonderfull thing in theory, now all that is let is to wait and see.