Scientists at IBM and two partner companies have developed a promising material that they believe will lead to a new kind of computer memory chip able to meet the growing appetite for storing digital music, pictures and video.
The advance will be described in a technical paper that was to be presented yesterday at the International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco by researchers from IBM and two computer memory manufacturers, Qimonda and Macronix.
The scientists have designed a new semiconductor alloy derived from materials currently used in optical storage devices like CDs and DVDs.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
This team is not the only entrant in the race to find alternatives to flash memory, the prevailing form of nonvolatile storage -- so called because it can retain information without power.
Intel and STMicroelectronics have formed a partnership to pursue the technology, and, separately, Samsung has made announcements in the field.
Intel has shown 128-megabyte prototype chips and said it planned to introduce products next year.
Samsung has described a 512-megabyte prototype that it expects to market in 2008.
IBM scientists say their announcement is significant because the company's new material has performance advantages over alloys now in use in prototypes made by others in the industry.
If the technology proves cheap enough to manufacture, it will create a new competitor in the US$18.6 billion market for the inexpensive erasable memory chips that have proliferated in mobile phones, music players and other consumer gadgets in recent years.
Moreover, although IBM has withdrawn from the memory chip business, the company said it was intensely interested in the technology for corporate computing applications like transaction processing. Faster nonvolatile memory could change the design of the microprocessors that IBM makes, speeding up a variety of basic operations.
The new memory technology could potentially be added to a future generation of the IBM Power PC microprocessor, according to Spike Narayan, a senior manager at the company's Almaden Research Center.
Over two and a half years, in a trial-and-error process, scientists here explored a class of materials that can be switched from an amorphous state to a crystalline one and then back again by repeated heating. The compounds, known as GST, or germanium-antimony-tellurium phase change materials, are routinely used today to make inexpensive optical disks that are read from and written to with laser beams.
The IBM-led team has proved that the same effect can be realized by using a small electrical current. That has made it possible to build tiny memory cells that can store digital 1s and 0s by means of electricity rather than light.
IBM scientists say the new material is an alloy composed of just germanium and antimony, and is referred to as GS. The scientists do not describe the material in detail in the paper.
The advantage of the new material, according to the scientists, is that it can be used to create switches more than 500 times as fast as today's flash chips.
Moreover, the prototype switch developed by the scientists is just 3 nanometers high by 20 nanometers wide, offering the promise that the technology can be shrunk to smaller dimensions than could be attained by flash manufacturers.
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
‘ARMED GROUP’: Two defendants used Chinese funds to form the ‘Republic of China Taiwan Military Government,’ posing a threat to national security, prosecutors said A retired lieutenant general has been charged after using funds from China to recruit military personnel for an “armed” group that would assist invading Chinese forces, prosecutors said yesterday. The retired officer, Kao An-kuo (高安國), was among six people indicted for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. The group visited China multiple times, separately and together, from 2018 to last year, where they met Chinese military intelligence personnel for instructions and funding “to initiate and develop organizations for China,” prosecutors said. Their actions posed a “serious threat” to “national security and social stability,” the statement
NATURAL INTERRUPTION: As cables deteriorate, core wires snap in progression along the cable, which does not happen if they are hit by an anchor, an official said Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) immediately switched to a microwave backup system to maintain communications between Taiwan proper and Lienchiang County (Matsu) after two undersea cables malfunctioned due to natural deterioration, the Ministry of Digital Affairs told an emergency news conference yesterday morning. Two submarine cables connecting Taiwan proper and the outlying county — the No. 2 and No. 3 Taiwan-Matsu cables — were disconnected early yesterday morning and on Wednesday last week respectively, the nation’s largest telecom said. “After receiving the report that the No. 2 cable had failed, the ministry asked Chunghwa Telecom to immediately activate a microwave backup system, with
RSS