Gadget buyers today can purchase PCs, cell phones and mp3 players with significantly more memory than their predecessors for just a few dollars more than they paid a few years ago. To wit: you can purchase an 80-gigabyte iPod today for the same price (around $250) you paid for one with just 30 gigabytes of memory two years ago. But consumers are in for a rude awakening if technology makers fail to find a way to shrink memory components enough to continue packing more of them into ever-tinier gadgets.

Computers and other electronic devices use different types of memory to perform different functions. PCs use a hard disk drive, for example, to store large amounts of data for the long term and Random Access Memory (RAM)—also called "solid state" memory—to retain data outside the hard drive, where it can be accessed quickly and repeatedly. In an attempt to ensure that memory is not sacrificed with size, however, device makers are eyeing an experimental approach called "universal memory," which not only takes up less space but is also faster than the RAM now available.  Currently only a handful of companies are investing in the budding technology, but that could change as new forms of universal memory emerge, most notably IBM's "racetrack" memory and Nantero, Inc.'s nano RAM (NRAM).

These join slightly more mature—yet still unproven—universal memories such as magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM), which uses magnetic polarization to store information permanently on a device's microprocessor, and "phase change" memory, which stores data in a glassy substance called chalcogenide as it is heated and its atoms are rearranged.

Each type of solid-state memory (which includes static RAM, dynamic RAM and flash) has its benefits and drawbacks. "Because of cost, it's often impractical to have all three, so the designer needs to make hard choices and sacrifice something (such as speed, battery life, et cetera) and go with only one or two out of the three memory types," says Greg Schmergel, Nantero's co-founder, president and chief executive officer.

SRAM, often used for cache memory in microprocessors, can rapidly read and write data without sucking up a lot of power, but it cannot hold as much data as DRAM. DRAM, however, is slower than SRAM and requires more power, making it impractical for portable devices running on batteries. Flash's main advantage is that it retains information (such as an address book in a cell phone) even when the device is powered down, but it is not as fast or as durable as its counterparts, which means too much use will cause it to wear out and lose data.

To create NRAM, Woburn, Mass.–based Nantero places billions of carbon nanotubes on a silicon chip to store data. When an electrostatic force is applied, the carbon nanotubes move up and down to represent the 0s or 1s of data. The company has demonstrated, Schmergel says, that NRAM's approach has the speed and capacity to surpass other memory types and that it can be manufactured in existing chip-making facilities (called fabs). The question is whether major chipmakers such as Intel, Micron or Samsung can be persuaded that NRAM can be efficiently and reliably manufactured in high volume.

4 Comments

1. 1. Cybe R. Wizard 12:43 AM 9/3/08

   Although I dislike being so pedantic, your use of, "...magnetic pattern on thousands of nanowireseach 1,000 times thinner than a human hair..." in so reputable a scientific magazine is unforgivable. I understand that such is the current fad usage but one time less than any quantity is still equal to zero. " less than ," has as a result negative numbers, or, in other words, non-existence. Surely this was not the intended message?
   

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2. 2. Cybe R. Wizard 10:00 AM 9/3/08

   Apparently pointy brackets remove the text between them. What I did say is: "[many times] less than [any quantity]," has as a result negative numbers...

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3. 3. tester123 10:52 AM 9/3/08

   Hello

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4. 4. bely5200 07:03 AM 12/17/09

   As the development of technology ,I believe that the ability of keeping memory must increace and the speed is more quicker than today's.

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