Terabyte Thumb Drives Made Possible by Nanotech Memory
448875
Copper nanowires power low-cost electronic memory that uses one one-thousandth the energy of the ubiquitous flash memory found in most iPhones and other mobile devices. Researchers hope the new memory technology will become the new storage medium of choice.
681891
At CEATEC, Sony unveils a home server packed with a terabyte of storage. Also: Networking via ordinary light fixtures?
503675
Western Digital's latest external drive tops out at 1 terabyte. Plus: Handy tool kit keeps road warriors connected. In Gear Factor.
749158
Based on Single Level Cell (SLC) flash technology, the Mtron 128GB drive will only make it to market as an OEM product, where it might turn up in the Spring as an expensive option on laptops. The performance of 120MB/sec on writes, and 100MB/sec on reads is way above levels found on older SSD drive designs.
91821
fenimor writes &quot;Physicists at Imperial College London described a new method for potentially encoding and storing up to one Terabyte of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD.
649631
Agere is working to make tiny drives the heart of MP3 players and other devices. But are nonstandard approaches worth the risk?
520148
WiebeTech ToughTech external mini drives are now available in 200GB and 250GB capacities.
313173
Using advanced "nanopatterning" techniques, IBM researchers plan to build 100TB tape storage devices.
302510
Newest models use flash memory, have high still-image resolutions.
168310
By exploiting the physics of how light reflects off of pits in a plastic surface, researchers have come up with a method for storing 1,000 gigabytes of data on a DVD-size disk.
718690
ALMADEN, CALIFORNIA -- IBM has begun work on new technologies designed to boost the capacity of tape storage devices by 250 times. Using "nanopatterning" techniques derived from the company's microprocessor division, researchers say they expect to one day build cartridges that can store as much as 100TB of data.
377898
The chip maker has announced a tiny drive that could help bring the power of desktop computers to handheld devices.
222547
A novel nanolaser could cram more data onto a hard disk.
207985
Analysis: Low flash memory prices could mean lower cost solid-state devices and bigger storage in gadgets.
214212
Handheld computer maker PalmOne Inc. unveiled a personal digital assistant Monday that doubles as a portable data storage drive. The Tungsten T5 handheld has 256 megabytes of built-in flash memory, of which 215 MB will be available to the user.
742234
A laser capable of being focused to a spot on a rotating disk just 80 nanometers across, is what Fujitsu needed to be able to beat competitors Toshiba and Seagate, in the race toward terabit areal densities. Yesterday, Fujitsu announced they'd achieved that goal.
358319
(InfoWorld) - Flash memory and hard-disk drives could face a challenge from a new chip technology, dubbed phase-change memory, being developed by a group of companies led by IBM. The companies on Monday announced the results of their latest research into the technology, which they say will do a better job of storing songs, pictures, and other data on iPods and digital cameras than current flash memory, and could someday replace disk drives. Among the advances, the companies have built a prototype device that runs 500 times faster than today's flash memory while using half as much power to write data to a memory cell, they said. The circuits on the device are much smaller than those on today's flash chips, measuring just 3 by 20 nanometers, and show that, unlike flash, phase-change memory will be suitable for production on the advanced manufacturing techniques targeted for use in 2015, the companies said. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. The progress came partly from the development of a new material to build the memory chips, a germanium alloy to which the researchers added other elements to enhance its properties. The companies have applied for a patent for the material, they said. Besides IBM, the developers include Qimonda, the DRAM spin-off from Infineon Technologies, and Taiwan's Macronix International Co. They plan to discuss their findings at the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineer's 2006 International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco later this week. It's the kind of breakthrough that people look forward to in the IT industry, although end users will have to be patient before it finds its way into products. It could take several more years for the technology to be developed sufficiently for use in finished products. Still, phase-change memory appears promising. The chips would be a new type of non-volatile memory, which is memory that can hold its electrical charge -- and its data -- after devices are turned off. Flash is also non-volatile, but phase-change memory can hold its electrical charge better than flash and use it more efficiently, its backers say. Flash also faces a roadblock in the future. As engineers make chip circuits more tiny, the circuits leak more power and ultimately lose their ability to store data after being turned off. The size limit appears to be around 45nm, although it will still be years before the flash industry starts using such tiny production technologies. Phase-change memory can be scaled down to 22nm, or far smaller than flash memory, the researchers developing it say. It also appears able to be more durable than flash, whose memory cells start to break down after 100,000 rewrites. While its prospects appear bright, the technology faces several hurdles. New chip designs must be relatively easy to manufacture, and they need to be cost-effective enough to attract device makers. RambusÂ faced this issue when its chips failed to overtake DRAM as the main memory type for PCs several years ago, despite having the backing of Intel. The problem, some companies said, is that the chips was were too costly to produce -- although Rambus vehemently disagrees with this. IBM has posted photos of the phase-change devices here, and some animation clips here.