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Buckminsterfullerene Strikes Again - Nanotube RAM 262

Posted by timothy from the when-it's-in-my-pocket-and-in-retail-stores dept.
putaro writes "Nanotube based RAM, under development by Nantero, promises to deliver densities of over 1 terabit per cm^2, is non-volatile and faster than current DRAM. The Economist has a nice story. Forget about just kicking DRAM's and FLASH's butt, is this finally the end of magnetic storage as well?"
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Buckminsterfullerene Strikes Again - Nanotube RAM More

Buckminsterfullerene Strikes Again - Nanotube RAM

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  • story (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10, 2003 @05:55PM (#5927905)
    A new type of computer memory uses carbon, rather than silicon

    WAITING for a computer to turn on is a nuisance. That is why manufacturers have been trying to create "non-volatile" memories. These would be fast, like the random-access memory (RAM) chips that are currently used for often-accessed memory, but they would also continue to store information even without power, like hard drives, which are too slow to use except for long-term storage.

    Several technologies have been competing to become the standard for fast, non-volatile memory. The best known is magnetic RAM, which IBM and Motorola are touting. Others are based on polymers or on strange-sounding metal alloys called chalcogenides that change shape when an electric charge is applied to them. But there is now a new entrant to the field: carbon.

    Carbon comes in many forms. Diamonds and graphite are two of the most familiar ones. A less familiar variety is the nanotube, also known as a "buckytube" after Richard Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes have a framework similar to the arrangement of the atoms in a nanotube. Nanotubes consist of a cylindrical array of carbon atoms whose diameter is only about 1 nanometre (a billionth of a metre). If Nantero, a firm based in Woburn, Massachusetts, proves correct, such tubes will soon be an integral part of computer memories.

    Nantero's memory chips consist of billions of nanotubes, each a few hundred nanometres long, suspended from a silicon wafer. Another wafer sits about 100 nanometres below the first. Because the nanotubes that Nantero uses conduct electricity, a small electric charge at one point on the second wafer will draw several dozen nanotubes towards it. Once they are there, they stay there. That is because they are bound by Van der Waals forces--intermolecular bonds that do not depend on external power for their maintenance. An additional application of current, however, will release the nanotubes. This means that a group of a few dozen nanotubes can act as a memory element, storing a single bit (either a one or a zero) of the binary code that computers use to operate. If the connection between the wafers is live at a particular point, the bit represented is a one. If not, it is a zero.

    If nanotubes were not so small, this would not be a big deal. Because they are, though, Nantero's technology can already achieve a data density considerably higher than existing RAMs. And because the wafers are so close together, those data can move rapidly from place to place. Nantero's new memory can read or write a bit in as little as half a nanosecond (billionth of a second). The best RAM chips, by contrast, need ten nanoseconds to perform a similar operation.

    At the moment, Nantero has only a working prototype. But the firm aims to have memories on the market within a year. It thinks it will be able to tool up for commercial production quickly, because the fabrication technique it uses, though novel, relies on standard semiconductor-making technology.

    The main difficulty faced by others who have tried to go down the buckytube route is getting the tubes to align with each other when they are hung from the first wafer. Until now, the approach has been to try to grow all of the tubes in the correct orientation to start with. But Nantero's founders came up with a simpler, if less elegant, solution. They use established lithographic techniques to get rid of tubes that are pointing in the wrong direction by zapping them with an electron beam. That leaves only those that are hanging down towards the opposite wafer.

    Though the recent chip is certainly impressive, the reason for getting excited about Nantero is not so much the present as the future. Unlike silicon, which is pushing against its physical limitations, carbon-nanotube technology is in its infancy. Greg Schmergel, Nantero's boss, says that within the next few years the firm's engineers may be able to achieve data densities of a trillion bits per square centimetre (more than 1,000 times that available on existing RAM) and it will be possible to read those memories 100 times faster than can be done at the moment. The days of silicon-based memory may be numbered

  • Excellent... (Score:5, Funny)

    by inkedmn ( 462994 ) <inkedmn@inkedDEGASmn.com minus painter> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @05:55PM (#5927907) Homepage
    Something else I can stare longingly at on newegg while knowing full well i'll have to sell my wife and 2 pints of plasma to actually buy it...

  • The dome is great (Score:3, Funny)

    by Blaine Hilton ( 626259 ) * on Saturday May 10, 2003 @05:59PM (#5927921) Homepage
    The implications of the geodesic dome are just being explored, if this new type of memory is anything like the dome I expect we will hear more good things about it in the future.

    --
    Need a calculator [webcalc.net]?

  • Details (Score:5, Informative)

    by robbyjo ( 315601 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:02PM (#5927935) Homepage

    Here's a little details that pretty much summarize the docs:

    How it works. Nantero's memory chips consist of billions of nanotubes, each a few hundred nanometres long, suspended from a silicon wafer. ... This means that a group of a few dozen nanotubes can act as a memory element, storing a single bit (either a one or a zero) of the binary code that computers use to operate. If the connection between the wafers is live at a particular point, the bit represented is a one. If not, it is a zero.

    Speed. Nantero's new memory can read or write a bit in as little as half a nanosecond.

    Availability. At the moment, Nantero has only a working prototype. But the firm aims to have memories on the market within a year.

    Hurdles. The main difficulty faced by others who have tried to go down the buckytube route is getting the tubes to align with each other when they are hung from the first wafer. Until now, the approach has been to try to grow all of the tubes in the correct orientation to start with. But Nantero's founders came up with a simpler, if less elegant, solution. They use established lithographic techniques to get rid of tubes that are pointing in the wrong direction by zapping them with an electron beam. That leaves only those that are hanging down towards the opposite wafer.

    • I wonder.... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Maimun ( 631984 )
      how are they going to wire the thing? Suppose the nanotubes are grown, properly aligned and so on. How are they going to place the wires between them? AFAIK, the current technology for wiring the chips is exactly the same that puts the transistors, namely the photo-process. Obviously, this si not going to work on the scale of nanotubes.

  • Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cethiesus ( 164785 ) <cethiesus AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:05PM (#5927946) Homepage Journal
    This guy [slashdot.org] is right...

  • Now all we need (Score:3, Funny)

    by da5id ( 91814 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:09PM (#5927962)
    Get some people working on power supplys and rod logic, and dimond age here we come.

  • Finally... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by guynamedjohn ( 598527 )
    Someone should be able to make a decent mp3 player with this stuff...

  • wow (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JanusFury ( 452699 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .ddag.nivek.> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:09PM (#5927964) Homepage Journal
    Is there anything nanotubes CAN'T do? It seems like new uses are being discovered for them every day.

    Though the idea of using a material that burns when exposed to a camera flash, for storage, is a little unnerving... Anyone know how they plan to address that and other problems/inherent properties of nanotubes?

    • Re:wow (Score:2, Funny)

      by Eudial ( 590661 )
      Nanotubes can't have sex.

    • Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)

      by dAzED1 ( 33635 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:27PM (#5928024) Journal
      "Though the idea of using a material that burns when exposed to a camera flash, for storage, is a little unnerving... Anyone know how they plan to address that and other problems/inherent properties of nanotubes?"

      Now, I'm not there, not involved with the company at all, but I'm going to venture a guess and say that maybe, just maybe, they won't have the nanotubes exposed and just lying around? Maybe, just maybe, the nanotube wafers will be, oh I dunno, enclosed in something? Cause where a flash would hurt it, I imagine a well-placed finger would hurt them too.

      Just a thought.

      • really and here I thought cyber terrorist would get to enter a new age where all they do is bring a screwdriver and flash camera.
    • Though the idea of using a material that burns when exposed to a camera flash, for storage, is a little unnerving... Anyone know how they plan to address that and other problems/inherent properties of nanotubes?

      No more of your fancy windows [antec-inc.com] in computer cases.

  • Paper's far more efficient (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:16PM (#5927987)
    1 terabit per cm^2...

    I can write a byte's worth on a cm^2 piece of paper; Just repeat many times and stack; when measuring measure from above.
  • here [nantero.com]

    "Nantero, Inc. Creates an Array of Ten Billion Nanotube Bits on Single Wafer Standard Semiconductor Processes Used"

    Sounds like the real deal....

  • And the skeptic says... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda@nOSpAM.etoyoc.com> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:26PM (#5928016) Homepage Journal
    Like any technology, I will only belive it once I can buy it. DVD-Ram is almost there. I'm still waiting for my reflective-LCD laptop. And where did the fuel cells for PDA's go?

    Bitter... No, not me.

  • Does it resist EMP? Flux pods? Stray magnetism? Heck, would lots of radiation corrupt it?

  • Will it be electronically durable? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:32PM (#5928042)
    Given the description of how it works, I wonder if it will be inherently less durable against electric shock than current hardware. We've heard the advantages, it'll be interesting to hear what the disadvantages might be. Things like failure rate and recovery methods come to mind. Definetly worth watching though!

    Ryan Fenton
    • If they get the density near what they're trumpeting, I don't think there'll be all that much trouble with bit rot. I bet they could make a RAID-on-a-chip that would still have more space than you need just yet. Imagine memory RAID. That would be so cool....

  • The Science Behind the Technology (Score:5, Informative)

    by citanon ( 579906 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:33PM (#5928049)

    For those who are interested, the Nantero's technology is based on earlier work in the lab of Charles M. Lieber [harvard.edu]. The original paper was published in the journal Science [sciencemag.org]. Rueckes et al, Science, Vol 289, P. 94. [sciencemag.org] Rueckes went on to found Nantero. [nantero.com]

    The original experiment worked as follows:

    One rope of singled walled carbon nanotubes sits suspended above another in a crossbar configuration. When an electric charge is applied, the top nanotube rope bends downward, where it is held in place by van der waals attraction to the bottom rope. To deactivate the switch, another charge is applied to repel the bent nano-rope into its original position.

    This electromechanical switch works as a switch because of tunneling of electrons between the upper rope and the lower rope. When the ropes are sticking together, enough electrons tunnel from the upper to the lower, or vice versa so that one can measure a good signal, turning the switch on. When the ropes are apart, the tunneling conductance drops by several orders of magnitude, turning the switch off.

    The original experiment was done with bundles of carbon nanotubes. In principle, the concept should work at much higher densities for single nanotubes, but the technology still has hurdles to cross. Currently, the tubes conduct because ropes of tubes are likely to contain both semiconductor type and metal type tubes. Since metal type tubes are fantastic conductors, having even a few of them in a rope will allow a device to work. However, when one crosses the threshold to single nanotubes, the device will only work if the tubes are metal type. Hence, an important problem will be finding a way to produce only metal type single walled nanotubes. Currently, carbon nanotubes are produced in a mixture of semiconductor type and metal type nanotubes. It's difficult to control that property because it depends sensitively on the way the sp2 bonds on the nanotube sidewall line up, something that no one yet knows how to control.

  • Sounds like this type of memory will be extremely sensitive to radiation, making single event upsets of stored bits very likely.

  • Finally... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gallir ( 171727 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:48PM (#5928102) Homepage
    I'll be able to start a Java applet in Mozilla running on top of KDE.

    Just kidding, in fact I just want to run Nautilus.

  • Great for security, too! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jade E. 2 ( 313290 ) <slashdot@p[ ]storm.net ['erl' in gap]> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:53PM (#5928113) Homepage
    Replacing SDRAM (or RAMBUS or whatever) with some type of NVRAM will require a whole new approach to security. Otherwise, when you go home at night, what's to stop me from booting your computer (off a CD or floppy if it's reasonably secure), or rebooting it if you left it running but locked, and running an app that allocates a couple gigs of memory without initializing it then lets me browse it? Encryption keys, passwords, anything that's cached I could get. (Wouldn't care about anything stored on the disk, or other permanent media, I could get those with this method now.) Or, you could just initialize the memory on boot, but then you lose the advantages of nvram like the ability to shut down then pick right back up where you left off.

    You couldn't even track it by user at the OS level (user a has memory x and y allocated, so user b can't use that.) because I could still boot it into a different OS through a removable drive...

    Of course, you could just eliminate all caches of keys or passwords... But do you really want to have to re-enter your slashdot password everytime you hit refresh, or click on a link to the comments page, or click to read a reply?

    Maybe the solution would be to specify a certain area of RAM that would get initialized on power-up (be it a reboot or just waking up from an NVRAM suspend), and get apps to put any sensitive information in that area... Which would probably require additions to your favorite OS's API, in addition to new versions of a lot of apps...

    Just thinking 'out loud' here... Anybody else thought about this?

    • Have you heard of the power-on password in the bios? Of course, with physical access to the machine, you could get around that, too.

      Otherwise, as you point out, what you describe is no different than accessing the hard disk to collect data.

    • (Wouldn't care about anything stored on the disk, or other permanent media, I could get those with this method now.)

      But do you really want to have to re-enter your slashdot password everytime you hit refresh, or click on a link to the comments page, or click to read a reply?

      Slashdot authentication is stored in a cookie called "user". Browsers typically save cookies to a file on your hard drive, and may do so even if the cookie is set to expire at the end of the current session - the cookie could simpl
    • It doesn't change anything. Like you said you can get this now. I work in security and ANY system that a knowledgeable person can lay hands on they OWN it. As part of my job I do security audits and I have this little stickers that say "I OWN THIS" if I can get close enough to put a sticker on it then the statement is true. I doubt that will every change, but who knows what the future holds.
    • Actually I think this will be great for extremely secure storage, because of one simple fact, the nanotubs are sensative to light to the point they explode from a camera flash. That means in extremely secure installations with sensative data it's better to lose than have someone else recover they can use this as a failsafe mechanism when physical security has been breeched, you must pass voice and retina authentication, place your hand on the plate and click your heels three times... if your not the right
      • So...what you're saying is that it's easy to peel open the light protection layer in RAM and expose it to a flash automatically? It's easy to build a physical mechanism to which includes moving parts and a flash bulb that actually does this?

        Personally, I think that just hooking the data read/write head up to a high voltage source making it into a powerful electromagnet that will make all the data on the harddrive unreadable is a lot easier. You could even make the modification to existing designs without

    • Re:Great for security, too! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theLOUDroom ( 556455 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @09:32PM (#5928742)
      Replacing SDRAM (or RAMBUS or whatever) with some type of NVRAM will require a whole new approach to security. Otherwise, when you go home at night, what's to stop me from booting your computer (off a CD or floppy if it's reasonably secure), or rebooting it if you left it running but locked, and running an app that allocates a couple gigs of memory without initializing it then lets me browse it?

      Technically, you're right. If someone wanted real security, they would have to make some changes to the OS&Apps and/or system acritecture.

      But really, you have to look at the reality of your system right now. Unless your disk is encrypted, and you need something like a smartcard to access the data, you're hosed if someone gets physical access to your machine even once.
      There's nothing that stops them popping open your case or booting from CD and copying your whole HD onto their Ipod or whatever. Even if the important bit of info they want is your password, they can always install a keylogger, and have that send them an email with your password (or even post is to a messageboard somewhere, just to aviod being traced).

      Actually, I'm willing to state a stronger case. You are screwed if someone can get (unsupervised) physical access to your machine. Period. Even if you encrypt everything. There are so many clever things someone could do to your system in order to get your data that you just could never know you're safe.

      I mean, even if you have the system wipe passwords from this new RAM on power down, it won't protect you. I could just open up your case, and stop the clock. All of a sudden, none of that stuff designed to wipe your data is working. I can then hook a logic analyzier and pattern generator up to your RAM, and just read out all your data. If your system wipes its RAM too frequently for that, I could just have an ASIC fabbed and put in on a little board which plugs in between your motherboard, and your RAM.

      The only way to stop this is to basically turn your RAM into and uber-smartcard, but even then, it's possible to hack a smartcard too.

      I guess my point is your thoughts are basically academic. Yes, this tecnology would add another way to exploit physical access to a PC, but there are already so many of those that I really don't think it matters. The only way you're going to get real security from someone with physical access to the system is to encrypt all chip-to-chip interconnections, and use whatever neat packaging technology the military uses for the chips in its military GPS units. Not very likely to happen.
    • Flush the RAM as part of the shutdown procedure.

      Modify the Kernel so the last thing it does is wipe the RAM clean.

      It has to be on shutdown, or someone can pop open the computer and take out the RAM without booting it.

      Or, design each RAM chip to dump its own data if it doesn't get a fresh charge from the motherboard every so often. This way, even if all attempts to flush RAM fail, the chip wipes itself clean before the power LED fades.

    • Re:Great for security, too! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Your can count on absolutely ZERO security if people have physical access to your machine.

      Use whatever encryption or security precautions you like. At the very least, a keyboard sniffer can easily compromise the enitre system.

      This technology changes nothing.
  • Instead of using these directly as ram, could they sell them as a ram drive? Basically just have some software supporting it, but have the harddrive at boot just start dumping itself onto this nano drive thing. and at some point do a switchover to that being say.. the C drive?

    after about 30 minutes an entire hard drive could be there, and it could connect via some standard connector. use the hard drive as secondary storage backup, and when the machine turns off, it dumps the harddrive back on it at boot

  • So should I postpone buying my new computer? (Score:3, Funny)

    by abhikhurana ( 325468 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @06:55PM (#5928124)
    The subject says it all....

  • Working Prototype - Size (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is how big their protoptype is from their website:

    "Dr. Thomas Rueckes, Chief Scientific Officer
    and Co-Founder said, "This gets around
    the problem that nanotubes cannot reliably be
    grown in large arrays. At the end of our
    process only the nanotubes in the correct
    positions are remaining. This process was
    used to make a 10Gb array now, but could easily
    be used to make even larger arrays--
    the main variable now controlling the size is the
    resolution of the lithography equipment."
  • "Get the scientists working on the tube technology immediately"

    - Jable, "Two Kings"

  • How about motherboards? (Score:4, Funny)

    by axxackall ( 579006 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @07:15PM (#5928187) Homepage Journal
    Still 200Mhz for system bus? With all those 4Ghz CPU and nanotube-based memory, seems to me that the motherboards is the worst part of the PC.

    Oops, sorry. I forgot cases, where usually there is not enough of power sockets and spaces for additional hard-drives. And don't forget floppy drives - they are still here, in most PCs I see in the store.

    I can easyly imagine to see, in a year or two, a PC with several TB of nanotube-based RAM and 1.44MB floppy drive, all connected to AOL with 56K modem.

    • Yea, but if this terabit/cm2 RAM ever matches the price of hard drives, you will not need ANY hard drives. A terabit is 128 gigabytes, Bucky! All you will need is two bays one for a Blu-Ray DVD burner and another for a reader.

      Daddy like!
      • Yes using standard motherboards you can have great capacity but the bus will be the speed bottleneck.

        However we can still have alot of benefits as soon as this comes out!

        Loading Windows2k, mozilla, and openoffice would be almost instantaneous on startup, even with the bus bottleneck. Ask anyone with a ram drive? Todays storage is slow as hell with primptive hard drives. In the 21st century its silly to keep using mechanically based storage methods. Its so early 20th when tapes and punch cards ruled the

  • Screw the memory applications.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by poptones ( 653660 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @07:17PM (#5928198) Journal
    If this is that fast (half a nS actuation time) and static as well, the implications go well beyond memory applications. OR gates, AND gates and flip/flops (every single nanotube is a complete f/f) are the building blocks of every CPU out there. What about a 128 bit CPU that didn't need an air conditioner to keep from destruction? A CPU with a 1nS clock cycle time and a few MB of on chip cache?

    It's a very cool idea, but I'm wondering why they didn't mention these issues. Is it an unmentioned limitation of the technology, or a limitation of the Economist's journalistic scope?

    • Re:Screw the memory applications.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by baywulf ( 214371 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @07:52PM (#5928370)
      "A CPU with a 1nS clock cycle time and a few MB of on chip cache?"

      Just to remind you, 1ns == 1GHz. What is the clock speed on the latest Pentium/Athlon?
      • More to the point, what is the speed of the transistors in the latest Pentium / Athlon.

        The clock speed is the time it takes to go through the longest segment of the pipe. A few hundred transistors if its anything of any use at all.
        • A gross oversimplification. There is much more to it than simple clock speed - for example, how much work can it do in one cycle? How much power does it dissipate?

          This is a static and nonvolatile technology. Think of a CPU that can be dynamically switched to zero hz while keeping its state - a complete machine that can be frozen and reawakened in an instant.

          If you have the memory structure, why not have 256 bit parallel data paths? Or, why not have megabytes of fast memory right on the CPU die? Or array

    • with the potential size their talking about how about integrating memory, large storage and the cpu into one chip?

  • Now HERE's a really strong argument... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by constantnormal ( 512494 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @08:01PM (#5928406)
    ... for 64-bit addressing.

    If you have this wonderfully fast and compact memory, the simplest way to exploit it is to access it in a linear manner with a whompin' huge address space.

    Who needs VM? -- Actually, we'll still need mechanisms to isolate processes from each other, so virtual addressing will still have a place. But not as a means to accomodate logical address spaces larger than physical address spaces.

    I want a fuel-cell powered, IBM 970 Powerbook with buckytube memory and an OLED display. Never mind the power switch, I'll just refuel it every other month or so.

  • Ok thats it... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Blacklotuz ( 575879 )
    Where do I invest in this nanotube technology. Every 10 seconds these thigns have another use that is lighyears ahead of anything we have now. One day I'll wake up and pull off my Nanotube based dirt proof - tempeture regulated blankets, step out of bed and go to the bathroom where I turn on my nanotube fillament based lights which last 10,000 years. I'll use the nanotube based super computer inside my razor to give me the perfect shave with no razor burn. Then Ill head into the kitchen and pour myself a bi
  • Clearly, people will use this technology to further facilitate media piracy. [end facetious mode]

    Wanna bet that the RIAA's gonna want a tax so high on this technology that it will become completely impractical to ever own?

  • Materials lead technology (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tacocat ( 527354 ) <`tallison1' `at' `twmi.rr.com'> on Saturday May 10, 2003 @11:00PM (#5929081)

    First, I have to confess that I am a Materials Engineer and not some ubergeek with a CSE degree.

    But it's a definite fact that technological advances are only made possible with the precedence of metallurgical advances.

    Silicon wafers today wouldn't exist without the metallurgical backing to create high purity Silicon, Aluminum, and so on.

    The point being that with the discovery of the buckey ball, we are entering a new age of history. We're not there, but we're working on it really hard.

    Before you toss me out as flamebait consider that each primary age of human civilization is named as a metallurgical Age: Bronze, Iron, Steel. Some might argue that we are in the Silicon Age right now. However, the impact of Silicon is not as ubiquitious as the impact of the discovery of Bronze, Iron, or Steel.

    But the Buckey Ball is going to be similar in the scope of impact as Steel or Iron. Why?

    • Structural Materials
    • Electronics
    • Optics
    • Aerospace
    It's a FUNDAMENTALLY new material product available for the engineers to play with.

  • SRAM (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ahfoo ( 223186 ) on Saturday May 10, 2003 @11:09PM (#5929116) Journal
    So far everybody is missing the point including the Economist article. This stuff would replace SRAM. High performance FPGAs from Xilinx and Altera are made of SRAM with refresh in the neighborhood of ten nanoseconds. This would make vast and fast FPGAs possible.
    So, instead of merely replacing system RAM or storage this would replace the CPU, the memory controllers, the video card, the sound card --it would be the ultimate SoC platform.
  • the memory manager and the part of the device manager than manages the hard drive will be one unit!!!

    so to get full potential from this we will have to redesign our OSs otherwise if we stick it in the current system it will be a fraction of its potential.

  • Can I claim prior art? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hobit ( 253905 )
    Well, it's almost prior art... [uspto.gov]

    Mark Brehob

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