The latest developments in memory have focused primarily on increasing bandwidth and reducing the voltage, and although there has been an increase in speed, the ultimate benefit to the user may not have been so tangible as expected. Still, improvements are still exploring different, and this time, researchers at the National Laboratory of Taiwan Nanodevices and the University of California Berlekey have created a memory based on silicon nanodots, which can be written and erased up to one hundred times faster than current memory products.



Many users are surprised by the speed that today can offer solid state drives. However, this speed is palpable compared to what they can do the hard drives. Now, faced with something like the RAM, it becomes very difficult to think that SSDs are not turtles. SSD best market offer figures of 500 or 600 megabytes per second reading and about 400-500 megabytes per second writing, but by way of example, DDR3 operating at a frequency of 100 MHz has a maximum transfer 6.400 megabytes per second. In other words, the non-volatile memory technology we use today still has plenty of room to grow and evolve. Speed ​​is a fundamental point, but we must not neglect details and durability.

Recently, a group of researchers at the National Laboratory of Taiwan Nanodevices and the University of California Berlekey presented information on a new type of nonvolatile memory based on silicon nanodots. Each nanopunto, which has a diameter no greater than three nanometers, plays the role of a bit. The points are then covered with a metal layer, and through the firing of a green laser high precision (has less than microsecond range), you can switch between loading and unloading of nanodots, effectively creating a "1 "and" 0 "needed. According to published information, the memory of nanodots could be written and erased up to one hundred times faster than current flash memory, and method of fabrication of this memory would be compatible with existing CMOS production lines, so that the transition to that technology should not be so traumatic for manufacturers.

Of course, there are still many details to resolve and clarify. First, the memory uses an average of seven volts, although a number that would not be a problem, is likely future developments in this technology seek to reduce. Secondly, either nothing has been said in regard to storage density. Currently, the nanodots have a diameter of three nanometers, but if you plan large-scale implementation, one of the most important objectives is to seek ways to reduce that size. A hundred times increase in speed of writing is certainly tempting, but hopefully they can efficiently exploit this discovery, especially if we talk about the cost.

Berlekey,Memory,Nanodevices,nanodots,Silicon,Technology