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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Madden who wrote (6454)	6/3/1999 8:24:00 AM
From: Zakrosian	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9256

An article from another thread. Way above my head, but you cognoscenti may find it interesting. 06-02-99 Hitachi Cracks 'Movie On A Chip' Memory From the 1394 Informer comes this interesting news: Hitachi's Cambridge R&D centre has claimed a memory technology breakthrough that will allow all the images and sound from a complete movie to be stored on a single chip. The system, PLEDM, is being proposed as a next-generation memory technology that could conceivably replace hard disks. The lab, a Hitachi-backed facility of Cambridge University, is engaged in nanotechnology research, and PLED (Phase-state Low Electron-number Drive Memory), looks like becoming its first major commercial product, in around five years time. PLED moves on from standard DRAM technology, which have one transistor and one capacitor cell, by using two transistors to make a "gain cell" in a smaller area. The PLEDTR (PLED TRansistor) is stacked onto the gate in a conventional transistor. The PLED cell itself is as small as a conventional transistor, with a read/write time of less than 10nsec and a large signal even at low voltage. It's therefore fast, inherently low power, and according to Hitachi could be developed to retain memory even with power switched off. This, combined with its ability to form the basis of multi-gigabit chips in the next century, would allow it to be used as a hard disk substitute, and allow large quantities of cheap, fast, non-volatile storage to be used in pocket devices. From Amateur Photographer (UK) June 5th 1999: New mega chip for digital file storage... Scientists from Cambridge University and Hitachi have developed technology that is likely to produce digital cameras which can store millions of images. The recent breakthrough in memory chip technology could make the problems of solid state, ie computer chip storage of memory hungry data - such as high quality digital images, sounds and video - a thing of the past. It now seems a single memory chip the size of a thumbnail, that is capable of instantly storing or accessing all the sounds and images of a feature length movie, will be manufactured in the future. The chip also consumes much less power than previous types of silicone chip - a real boon for digital camera users. Where current cameras have to rely on a CompactFlash or SmartMedia memory card which can store relatively few images - even on the 16 or 32Mb cards - the new memory chips could allow thousands, or even millions, of images to be stored and accessed instantaneously via a single memory chip. The Anglo-Japanese team has been funded for the past ten years by Hitachi, and the fresh semi-conductor technology called PLEDM (Phase-state Low Electron (hole) number Drive Memory) is its first commercial development. David Williams, Croup Leader at the Hitachi/Cambridge University labs said, "When the new chips are introduced, probably around 2006, we anticipate they'll be introduced with gigabyte technology capabilities. You'll have instant access to huge files." The University team says the new chips are so powerful, they will even be able to totally replace storage media like computer hard disk drives. edit: almost forgot to include the link steves-digicams.com