New Device May Revolutionize Computer Memory

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Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new device that they claim will revolutionize computer memory and make computers start more quickly. Here's the explanation:

“We’ve invented a new device that may revolutionize computer memory,” says Dr. Paul Franzon, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research. “Our device is called a double floating-gate field effect transistor (FET). Existing nonvolatile memory used in data storage devices utilizes a single floating gate, which stores charge in the floating gate to signify a 1 or 0 in the device – or one ‘bit’ of information. By using two floating gates, the device can store a bit in a nonvolatile mode, and/or it can store a bit in a fast, volatile mode – like the normal main memory on your computer.”
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as much as this sounds cool, and it'd be nice for "instant on" using these technology or memristors, or whatever else... if it's not going to give any sort of actual speed advantage while being used I'll stick with the cheaper stuff and wait the 30 seconds it takes to boot.
 
Aw, and I just upgraded my MRAM to racetrack memory. Something new always comes along! :(
 
pxc said:
Aw, and I just upgraded my MRAM to racetrack memory. Something new always comes along! :(
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You beat me to it.

Yeah I thought MRAM/NVRAM was gonna save us aswell, now they got this!?

Pesky scientists.
 
It seems to me that, after blowing the dust off of my memories of FET architecture, this 'solution' would cause significantly more problems than it would solve.

I'd imagine it would require a significant change to things like chip fabrication, read/write algorithms, OS operations, etc.

All so that you could....boot a few seconds faster? Save what I would assume is a minor amount of money on server farms in off-peak hours?
 
As mentioned in the article, I think the potential for power savings in idle devices is quite interesting.
 
Meh, all this lab stuff is great but lets see something make it into real products.
 
Absentee said:
So they made RAM that doesn't get wiped when powers cut off...
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more and more household devices are becoming vampire electronics because of the need to remain powered to keep an active memory state. I can see these new devices eliminate the need for sleep state and save everyone a few bucks a month in electricity. Even if the savings per household is small, power companies can finally sigh in relief when more people are turning off unused devices, relieving the power grid of unneeded stress.
 
Just one more thing to buy and upgrade every other year or for most [H] people... every 6 months. Lol
 
Azhar said:
more and more household devices are becoming vampire electronics because of the need to remain powered to keep an active memory state. I can see these new devices eliminate the need for sleep state and save everyone a few bucks a month in electricity. Even if the savings per household is small, power companies can finally sigh in relief when more people are turning off unused devices, relieving the power grid of unneeded stress.
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hey sleep mode has saved my bill and time. If it can get any better I'm all for it.
 
Absentee said:
So they made RAM that doesn't get wiped when powers cut off...
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Or i'd say ssd drives with MEGA-cache!! sounds great. make it so as it loads the OS as normal the 2nd floating gate retains that data. then have a chip in the hdd that continues to load the entire hdd (in order of importance) during the drive's idle cycles. it's be like super-duper-fetch.

then make it an option to mark rarely accessed files/folders (plus obviously blank blocks) as areas that can be wiped and used for cache (virtual memory).

i think this tech would be awesome. just needs some code and silicon to back it up. it'd make anything you left on your desktop (primary hdd) absolutely fantastic as a working space for multimedia load/save times virtually only limited by the cpu or sata/pcie bus speed.
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I hear Kentron is coming out with a new twist on DDR
 
just about every digital microelectronics system today uses CMOS processes, which are FETs.

Secondly, "require a significant change" is true for pretty much every disruptive technology.

Levii said:
It seems to me that, after blowing the dust off of my memories of FET architecture, this 'solution' would cause significantly more problems than it would solve.

I'd imagine it would require a significant change to things like chip fabrication, read/write algorithms, OS operations, etc.

All so that you could....boot a few seconds faster? Save what I would assume is a minor amount of money on server farms in off-peak hours?
Click to expand...
 
ya, why is this better than say embedding a 16 GB SSD chip on a motherboard?
It would be simple enough to do. not a parallel setup so it would be slow, however it would
work well for instant-on type applications.
 
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