Scientists create nanodot SSDs
The nanodot-based drives could replace traditional flash SSDs within five years.
As reported over on Thinq, a team of scientists lead by Dr. Jay Narayan have developed a new method of data storage which uses nanodots - tiny structures measuring 10nm across - to store individual bits, resulting in a silicon chip capable of storing vast quantities of data.
Dr. Narayan claims that the current state of the art in the technology, which allows for 10nm diameter nanodots, would allow chips measuring just four square centimetres to store 512GB of data - and that's just the beginning.
With the team currently investigating the possibility of reducing the size of the nanodots to just 6nm - something Dr. Narayan believes is easily achievable - data storage densities would increase accordingly, creating tiny storage devices capable of holding far more data than current solid-state technologies such as flash memory.
The team claims that its work represents a technology which could be "manufactured cost-effectively," and Dr. Narayan even claims that products based around nanodot storage could take over from traditional flash-based solid-state drives in "five years - or sooner."
The technology still has a way to go before it's commercially viable, of course, but anything which can increase the data density of solid-state storage and drive down the cost-per-gigabyte - still one of the biggest barriers to entry for those thinking about upgrading their traditional hard drives - is to be applauded.
Do you believe that the future of storage lies with solid-state devices - whether traditional flash RAM or neat nanodot-based systems - or does the humble spinning magnetic platter still have a lot to give? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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16 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyAlso, Narayan is pretty basass.
this probably wont be ussed as a boot drive at least not at first it will probably be for a data drive
for example at min my c drive has over 200gb data on it and data has nearly 1tb so current ssd's are not worth it to me so ill be waiting for these
Right now it's just a storage medium without read/write mechanism.
I'd sooner count on PCM or such blazing past Flash. It is already in the process of replacing NOR Flash at this point.
Thats why you strip windows down to fit on a small SSD, and put the rest and install the rest on another drive. My C: drive is currently about 29gb and its hardly stripped down what so ever.
is 4 square centameters not 2 cm x 2 cm
Sorry, but that's 16 square cm :P
Yeah, would have a few terabytes in the sice of a HDD and several times the speed.
Hope the prices relate to the cost and not to a demand of making a profit 20 times the cost.
Yup and I hope so, if not faster! The only downside is if you want to buy every newest thing then you're gonna spend a lot of cash. I'm all for anything that pushes the envelope faster and further :)
Nice to keep an eye on, but like any tech: see first believe later :D
Performance will depends on what read/write method they will invent for it.
5 years is not a long time in this industry and I can see this being developed sooner rather than later.
Although it does offer the highest storage density per square inch - traditional hard drives do not even come close.
Afraid I have no links other than the podcast and the NCSU site (http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmsnarayannanodots/); can't get hold of the actual paper...
EDIT: Damnit, someone beat me to it! :)