Nanowires developed to retrieve data on the double

Those fond of how quickly flash memory reads and writes their data are sure to adore the research that a few University of Pennsylvania scientists have been working on, as Ritesh Agarwal (pictured) and colleagues have crafted "nanowires capable of storing computer data for 100,000 years and retrieving that data a thousand times faster" than existing micro-drives. Moreover, the "self-assembling nanowire of germanium antimony telluride" consumes less energy and space than current memory technologies, and even Agarwal stated that the "new form of memory has the potential to revolutionize the way we share information, transfer data and even download entertainment." Unfortunately, there seems to be no word on if (or when) this creation could be headed to the commercial realm.

[peterskruger @ Sep 18th 2007 9:57AM]

nano is the new black

[Paul @ Sep 18th 2007 10:55AM]

This just in! It will be ready and available to use by the time the Touch gets enough capacity that it becomes usable.

[Josh @ Sep 18th 2007 10:10AM]

Nano, Nano...Mork and Mindy anyone?

This is cool. Put the power of an Xbox or PS3 in a hand-held one day.

[Matthew Hilario @ Sep 18th 2007 2:50PM]

Robin Williams is the original gangster.

[Jim Halpert @ Sep 18th 2007 11:13AM]

damn it...takin back the ipod touch now..XD

[anonymous @ Sep 18th 2007 11:22AM]

why take the iTouch back? it'll probably be broke by the time this hits the market where you could afford it.

[stephen @ Sep 18th 2007 1:01PM]

Yes, it has the "potential", but it'll be like every other tech that "promises" "revolutionizing" the industry, and it will fade into the distance.

[Matt @ Sep 18th 2007 1:12PM]

The neat thing about "100,000 year" claims is that it's IMPOSSIBLE TO CONFIRM.

[Gaz @ Sep 18th 2007 1:52PM]

do you know how memory works. a charge in a certain area represents a binary 1 no charge represents 0 they can watch how fast the 1 degrades to a 0 then work out how long data will last

[GazzyC @ Sep 18th 2007 2:33PM]

Ahh but do you know how the shift key works? This memory will change the way we play Doom forever!

[Matt @ Sep 18th 2007 2:37PM]

No, actually I don't know how memory works. Thank you for enlightening me. :-) I still question the accuracy of the hundred thousand year claim... but it is nice to know that they can at least estimate it.

[Eric @ Sep 18th 2007 3:57PM]

According to the article the system uses 'extremely low power consumption for data encoding - 0.7mW per bit'. So how much power does it take to write 1MB? 8388608 bits x 0.7E-3W = 5.9kW! I've got a feeling the device would probably pop long before 6MW squeezes into 1GB. Please tell me the author of the article messed up!

Write speed and longevity sound great, but otherwise call us when you've got the 'extremely low power consumption' down a few orders of magnitude, U Penn dude.

[oddity @ Sep 19th 2007 9:40AM]

The article says that write operations take only 50 nanoseconds to complete. Some quick math:

0.7 mW/bit * 1 bit * 50 ns = 0,000000000035 joules = 0.035 nanojoules.

In other words, writing a single bit takes very little energy. So lets see how much energy it would take to write a whole gigabyte:

0.035 nJ * 8 * 1024^3 = 300647710.72 nJ = 0.3 J.

So with just one joule of energy, you could write over 3 gigabytes of data. Of course, if you tried to write all those bits simultaneously, the peak power requirement would be huge.

Anyway, a modern hard drive consumes something like 10 Watts (10 joules per second) during write operations. The difference between that and this new tech is incredible.