bucacs@ux1.cts.eiu.edu (Carlos Dragonslayer Butler) (05/02/91)
Peep this yall:
Reprinted without permission from the Chicago Sun-Times
'Memory cube' magnifies computer power
by Lee Siegel
Associated Press
Los Angeles-Scientist have developed a 3-D computer memory system
they say could store the contents of 400,000 books or 3,000 personal computers
on a piece of plastic smaller than a sugar cube.
Peter Rentzepis, a chemistry professor at the University of California,
Irvine, announced the Pentagon-financed development of a prototype "memory
cube" when he spoke Tuesday at the Materials Research Society's spring meeting
in Anaheim.
So far, researchers have used laser beams to store only 1000 bits...
inside the prototype. But the memory cube ultimately could store 1 trillion
bits of data, Rentzepis said in an interview. However, years of work are
required to improve the new memory system so it can be commercially available
in computers, he added.
If researchers are successful, the cheap, lightweight and super-
compact memory cube could vastly increase the capabilities of personal
computers and allow much more sophisticated computers on military planes and
weapon systems, Rentzepis said.
"It will be a fundamental breakthrough if this works and can be
commercialized," said Marc Nussbaum, chief of technology at Western Digital,
....
[stuff about current storage HD -- 3,000 PC figure is based on 40 mg
HDs]
[stuff about bits, bytes, and actual text]
The prototype memory device is a polymer plastic cube. A material
that chemically reacts to laser light is uniformly dispersed throughout the
cube.
To store data in the cube, a laser beam is split in 2 parts, which
enter the cube from different directions. At the point where the 2 beams
intersect, the light is absorbed, changing the material at that point in
the cube from clear to blue. One blue spot or one clear spot each
corresponds to 1 bit of information.
To make the memory cube live up to its potential, scientist must
find a way to prevent the data from erasing itself at room temperature, as
it does now, Rentzepis said.
The cube was developed with a $1.4 million grant from the Air Force
laboratory in Rome, N.Y., and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Comments anyone?
--
Carlos Dragonslayer Butler| "People often condescend
bucacs@ux1.ctseiu.edu | what they fail to comprehend.
Lord of House | Ignorance makes life easier.
| Peace, knowledge, love and happiness." a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com (05/04/91)
I thought I saw something like this this about 3 years ago. Then they were talking about gigabytes in a 1-3 cm square. As far as I know, nothing came of that one either. -- a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com My opinions are my own, and do not represent those of my employer.
dag@persoft.com (Daniel A. Glasser) (05/07/91)
Anyone remember magnetic bubble memory? The prototypes and hype for
bubble memory go back, I believe, to the 1960's (or maybe the 1950's)
but by the time they got that technology both reliable and affordable,
semiconductor memory which was faster, cheaper and more compact (though
volitile) severly limited its application and it sort of died.
I'm not predicting that the holographic plastic cube memory (which is
what this thing is) will go the same way, though they put a rather vague
time frame on this stuff. The idea's been around for a LONG time. It's
been mentioned in speculative fiction over the years. I think that HAL's
memory (in "2001, A Space ...") was supposed to be holographic. The
potential density in this kind of storage is phenominal provided that the
optical technology advances allow inexpensive, compact, and stable
self-calibrating read/write mechanisms.
I'm not an expert on the technology, and the poster did not state that
the cube is read by introducing a beam along one of the axis and seeing
where the beam comes out. Vibration and temperature (and maybe even
humidity) will effect where the beam exits.
Are these cubes actually random access, or are they read as a continuous
data stream from which the memory controller extracts the bits that are
being addressed? Even given that the storage will be available, will we
be able to effectively use it, or will it just become a non-rotating
block storage device? How well does this technology scale? (If a 1cm cube
can hold gigabytes, how 'bout a 1" cube? Long live the English measurement
system!)
Aside from computer data, this type of technolgy offers some rather interesting
consumer items --
Video and audio libraries available shrink wrapped in the
checkout lines of grocery stores everywhere.
Combined with heads-up displays, navigation systems for your
car where the entire world road atlas is stored in your dashboard
and can be updated on a continual basis by side-band broadcasts.
Ditto with the news.
Incredable role-playing multimedia games where multiple scenarios
based on each decision point can be seamlessly branched.
and one of my favorites...
A new style of video recording, where the event/performance/scene/etc.
is recorded from many angles at once and the viewer gets to choose
which view {s,}he is going to view from moment to moment, maybe
multiple views at once on a split screen (or multiple screens.)
I can go on and on... (and already have.)
Daniel A. Glasser
Disclaimer:
My views are not necessarily those of my employer. Void where
prohibited by law. Unix(tm) is a trademark of AT&T, and appears
only once in this article (here.)
--
Daniel A. Glasser | Persoft, Inc. | dag@persoft.com
"Their brains were small, and they died."