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Data use draining your battery? Tiny device to speed up memory while also saving power
Millions of new memory cells could be part of a computer chip and [provide] speed and energy savings, thanks to the discovery of a previously unobserved functionality in a material called molybdenum ditelluride. The two-dimensional material stacks into multiple layers to build a memory cell.
Chip-maker companies have long called for better memory technologies to enable a growing network of smart devices. One of these next-generation possibilities is resistive random access memory, or RRAM for short. [...] A material would need to be robust enough for storing and retrieving data at least trillions of times, but materials currently used have been too unreliable. So RRAM hasn't been available yet for widescale use on computer chips. Molybdenum ditelluride could potentially last through all those cycles.
"We haven't yet explored system fatigue using this new material, but our hope is that it is both faster and more reliable than other approaches due to the unique switching mechanism we've observed," Joerg Appenzeller, Purdue University's Barry M. and Patricia L. Epstein Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the scientific director of nanoelectronics at the Birck Nanotechnology Center.
Electric-field induced structural transition in vertical MoTe2- and Mo1–xWxTe2-based resistive memories (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-018-0234-y) (DX)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday December 16 2018, @01:44AM (1 child)
If they achieve the longevity they are looking for, it should last much longer than SSDs.
The potential benefits of the universal memory approach are immense. And if you have some problem with it being glued to the CPU cores, you could use RRAM or whatever technology it ends up being separately in DIMM slots, drive bays, add-on cards, etc. Like Intel's 3D XPoint but not garbage.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 16 2018, @03:56AM
"If they achieve the longevity they are looking for, it should last much longer than SSDs."
Well yeah, that's the desired outcome.
And now, back to the ugly, hard reality of proving that their technology will do what they hope.