Most dense memory circuit unveiled
Pastor Dale Morgan
Most dense memory circuit unveiled*
From correspondents in Los Angeles
January 25, 2007 07:10am
Article from: Agence France-Presse
THE most dense computer memory circuit ever fabricated - capable of
storing around 2000 words in a unit the size of a white blood cell - was
unveiled by scientists in California today.
The team of experts at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who developed the
160-kilobit memory cell say it has a bit density of 100 gigabits per
square centimetre, a new record.
The cell is capable of storing a file the size of the United States'
Declaration of Independence with room left over, Caltech said.
But the chances of the unit being used in a laptop any time soon is
remote, said Caltech chemistry professor James Heath, who led the research.
"It's the sort of device that Intel would contemplate making in the year
2020," Prof Heath said. "But at the moment, it furthers our goal of
learning how to manufacture functional electronic circuitry at molecular
dimensions."
Whether the 2020 date is viable depends on the validity of Moore's law,
which states that the complexity of an integrated circuit typically will
double every year, he said.
However, manufacturers currently can see no clear way of extending the
miniaturisation beyond the year 2013, the Caltech-UCLA team writes in an
article that will appear in the journal Nature tomorrow.
"Whether it's possible to get this new memory circuit into a laptop, I
don't know," said Prof Heath. "But we have time."