Though not quite as impressive as the idea of toppling Intel and AMD within the next ten years, Hynix Semiconductor still has a decent reason to brag today. The South Korean chip producer has announced that it has just started mailing out the "fastest data transferring advanced dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip for mobile devices." Said chip is the one-gigabit LPDDR2 (low-power double-data-rate 2), which was crafted using 66-nanometer technology and features an 800-megabits per second operating speed at 1.2-volts. No word on exactly what devices will see the super-speedy chip packed within, but a company spokesperson did note that it plans on ramping up production during Q4 to meet "growing demand for flat-panel television sets and high-end handheld devices."

[Via Physorg]

The journey to pack more (proverbial) internal storage into the human brain has been going on for years, but a recent development at Tel-Aviv University could actually bring us one step closer to storing rudimentary memories on a manmade device. Reportedly, a new experiment has shown that it is indeed possible to store said memories "in an artificial culture of live neurons," which is a fairly significant step towards the "cyborg-like integration of living material into memory chips." Essentially, Itay Baruchi and Eshel Ben-Jacob carefully examined the firing patterns of a sea of electrodes and found that they could "deliberately create additional firing patterns that coexist with the spontaneous patterns." These forced patterns could theoretically represent simple memories stored in the neuron network, and after giving it a go on their own, they were able to see "memory patterns" persist for over forty hours in a homegrown concoction. Of course, the duo isn't likely to stop before producing "the first chemically operated neuro-memory chip," and while we could all use a longer train of thought every now and then, the studies could also "help neurologists to understand how our brains learn and store information."

[Via TGDaily]

Undoubtedly, there's been quite a few chips claiming to hold some sort of "world's smallest" title, but a team of researchers have crafted what they call the "most dense computer memory circuit ever fabricated," capable of "storing around 2,000 words in a unit the size of a white blood cell." Scientists at Caltech and UCLA put their proximity differences behind them for a bit to develop a 160-kilobit memory cell that purportedly has a record-setting density of "100 gigabits per square centimeter." The bantam chip is capable of holding a document the size of the US Declaration of Independence with room leftover for a few quarterly reports (or slow jams), but Caltech chemistry professor James Heath doubts that we'll see it in mainstream action anytime soon. Still, the team isn't backing down from its discovery, and hopes to see this manufactured and placed into laptops in the coming years.

[Via Slashdot]