Carbon Nanotube-Based NVRAM In 2-3 Years?

According to NanoWerk, UC Riverside researchers have come up with a memory device based on telescoping multi-walled carbon nanotubes. According to one of the researchers, 'This finding leads to a promising potential to build ultrafast high-density nonvolatile memory, up to 100 gigahertz or into the terahertz range" and a prototype could be demonstrated "in the next two to three years.' Similar devices from UCLA and Caltech based on bistable rotaxanes are farther along in being integrated into actual memory circuits, but tend to break after a fairly small number of position changes. Carbon nanotubes may promise more durable switches.

Simulations or something concrete?

[haluness]

A brief scan of the paper seemed to indicate that their results were based on simulations. Do they have some working model that justifies it coming out in 2 or 3 years?

Or did I read the paper to fast (hey, at least I *did* RTFA)?

Nano Abacus?

[Radon360]

It looks to me like they've essentially created what could be compared to a nano-abacus. I wonder how immune this system would be to physical movement (i.e. jarring). In a similar vein, I would imagine that it would be just as static sensitive as most other memory devices even though.

Did I miss something, though? How is the position of the telescoping tube read? Applying a current to it would change the position, would it not?

Re:Nano Abacus?

[unc0nn3ct3d]

I imagine this would be just as immune to physical jarring as say blood cells in your blood vessels would be wouldn't it? Or as resiliant as the atomic bond in elements are.. At this scale the physical movements that we create as humans wouldn't be felt, similar as the molecules in your hand don't feel it when you wave at someone, but the hand as a whole feels it.. or at least that is what I would think

2-3 years? Vapourware alarm!

[mark-t]

I've just seen that figure too many times now... 2 years is still a short enough time that it might seem feasable but still long enough away that by the time it has gone by, most everybody will have forgotten about it and moved on to something else.

It'd be really neat if this turns out to be genuine, but I'm not holding my breath. Been disappointed too many times already.

Prescient SF FTW

[JesseL]

Sounds vaguely similar to the nano-scale rod-logic of Neal Stephenson's stories.