1 terabyte thumb drive

[dragon]

Damn thats a lot, wonder how much one would cost if they ever do get it on the market.

A new type of memory technology could lead to thumb drives or digital-camera memory cards that store a terabyte of information--more than most hard drives hold today. The first examples of the new technology, which could also slash energy consumption by more than 99 percent, could be on the market within 18 months.

"It's a radically new technology," says Michael Kozicki, a professor of electrical engineering at the Arizona State University, whose group is one of several working on a version of the new memory. "If it really works as well as everybody thinks it could, it could genuinely revolutionize the memory and storage industry."

The new type of memory, called programmable-metallization-cell (PMC) memory, or nano-ionic memory, has been under development at the Arizona State University and at companies such as Sony and IBM. It's one of a new generation of experimental technologies that are bidding to replace hard drives, the nonvolatile "flash" memory used in portable electronics, and the dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in personal computers. The first ionic-memory prototypes were far too slow for practical use. But recently, researchers have demonstrated that materials structured at the nanoscale could yield ionic-memory devices that are much faster. Nano-ionic memory is significantly faster than flash memory, and the speed of some experimental cells has rivaled that of DRAM, which is orders of magnitude faster than flash.

The memory could also prove easy to make. Recently, the Arizona group published work demonstrating that nano-ionic memory can be made from materials conventionally used in computer memory chips and microprocessors. That could make it easier to integrate with existing technologies, and it would mean less retooling at factories, which would appeal to manufacturers.

Another reason that ionic memory is attractive is that it uses extremely low voltages, so it could consume as little as a thousandth as much energy as flash memory. In theory, it could also achieve much higher storage densities--bits of information per unit of surface area--than current technologies can.

These attractions are largely the result of a new mechanism for storing information. Flash memory stores bits of information as electrical charge, but the smaller the memory cells that hold the bits, the less charge they can hold, and the less reliable they become. The new memory stores information by rearranging atoms to form stable, and potentially extremely small, memory cells. What's more, each cell could potentially store multiple bits of information, and the cells can be layered on top of each other, increasing the memory's storage density to the point that it might rival that of the densest form of memory today: hard drives.

Each memory cell consists of a solid electrolyte sandwiched between two metal electrodes. The electrolyte is a glasslike material that contains metal ions. Ordinarily, the electrolyte resists the flow of electrons. But when a voltage is applied to the electrodes, electrons bind to the metal ions, forming metal atoms that cluster together. These atoms form a virus-sized filament that bridges the electrodes, providing a path along which electrical current can flow. Reversing the voltage causes the wire to "dissolve," Kozicki says. The highly resistive state of the electrolyte and the other, low-resistance, state can be used to represent zeroes and ones. Because the metal filament stays in place until it's erased, nano-ionic memory is nonvolatile, meaning that it doesn't require energy to hold on to information, just to read it or write it

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[[R_H]]

I wonder if that nano-ionic memory will find its way into solid state drives.

[Master of Ossus]

The rest of the article is significantly less hopeful.

A thumb drive that stored a terabyte of information, however, would have to take advantage of two other characteristics of nano-ionic memory, Kozicki says. First, it would have to store more than one bit of information per memory cell. Once the wire inside the cell forms, it's possible to apply a voltage again, causing more atoms to form, thickening the wire and further decreasing resistance. Successive jolts will thicken the wire yet more, and the different states of resistance could be used to store multiple bits of information per wire.

What's more, this type of memory can be stacked up in layers, since it's not necessary for each cell to be in contact with a base layer of silicon, as is the case with some other types of memory. Combining multiple bits per cell with multiple layers could make it possible to form extraordinarily dense memory, Kozicki says.

William Gallagher, a senior manager for exploratory nonvolatile-memory research at IBM Research, says that nano-ionic memory is one of several promising next-generation memory technologies. These include MRAM, which stores information using magnetic fields, and phase-change memory, which stores information in a way similar to that used to store bits on DVDs. Gallagher says that ionic memory's competitors have a head start on it. MRAM chips are already sold for some special applications, such as devices that will be exposed to harsh environments. But MRAM may also prove better for high-speed memory applications than as a replacement for flash, so it may not compete directly with nano-ionic memory. Samsung, however, could be selling a phase-change-based flash-replacement memory within a year.

Still, nano-ionic memory may not be far behind. A few companies have licensed nano-ionic-memory technology developed at the Arizona State University. These include Qimonda, based in Germany; Micron Technologies, based in Boise, ID; and a Bay Area stealth-mode startup. The startup is well on the way to producing its first memory devices, which Kozicki says could be available within 18 months. These first chips, however, won't rival hard drives in memory density, he says.

The new technology could nevertheless have difficulty winning wide adoption. Flash-type memory continues to improve and may do so for a few more generations of products. Also, the best nano-ionic-memory prototypes have been made from materials that aren't used in conventional microchips, so manufacturing could be costly, at least initially. Kozicki's group recently demonstrated that ionic memory can be built from a combination of silicon dioxide and copper--materials that are compatible with conventional manufacturing. But these materials do not perform as well, which could make them less attractive than alternatives such as phase-change memory. For the new type of memory to succeed, it may be necessary to convince manufacturers to switch to new materials.

[Kanastrous]

All my porn, on one little thumb drive?

We *are* living in the future.

[Shinova]

Aaahh, a potentially eventually-cheap, easy to use alternative to dozens of DVD-Rs for my anime. I wonder how long each lasts compared to DVD-Rs and hard drives.

[General Zod]

All my porn, on one little thumb drive?

We *are* living in the future.

Get back to me when they're commercially viable and cost less than $500 a pop.

[Cos Dashit]

Who needs to carry around one terabyte of... anything?

[Singular Intellect]

Who needs to carry around one terabyte of... anything?

Reminds me of the Bill Gates quote: "64 kilobytes will be more than anyone ever needs".

[Mr Bean]

Who needs to carry around one terabyte of... anything?

Reminds me of the Bill Gates quote: "64 kilobytes will be more than anyone ever needs".

Reminds me of the fact it's a misquote which has been popularized since the context was the fact that Bill was talking about his old operating system during the DOS days, 64k will be more than anyone needs makes sense if you add the line after "for our operating system".

It got popular in 92 and has made the rounds of the net since then.
But let me give you examples of what you could do with a 1TB drive.
You could put the Drive into a Camera, 2560x2560 pictures with 12.1 Megapixels resoultion takes about 19 Megs of storage space, a 1TB sized drive crammed into the camera body would let you take 52,000 pictures worth before running dry.

So one Camera which would have pretty much infinte photo-storage(And let you do things like Sports style one minute 240 pictures mode.) I'd say that's a good thing.

Oh here's another, a small portable 1TB drive would give you the option of having a Video Camera that can record 1080i HD video for multiple hours, in fact a 1TB drive means a single VC can hold over 2,000 hours of HD footage, take that thing on a vacation and record the whole thing from start to finish.

And the extra room means we can switch from 1080p to something new, maybe IMAX

Trust me, storage needs will continue to expand to meet storage capacity. If we have more space, we will find more stuff to fill it with.

[Singular Intellect]

FYI Bean, if you think I was trying to imply 1 terabyte is more than enough for anything, you're quite incorrect. I was actually trying to point out the exact opposite.

[phongn]

The quote is 640KB.

As far as the average user is concerned, however, 1TB is probably more than they'll need. Who cares about taking random vacation videos in enormous resolution? And 1TB lets you stores some ridiculously huge number of home photos (my 10MP EOS 400D uses up about 10MB/photo in RAW).

[CaptainZoidberg]

Who needs to carry around one terabyte of... anything?

Um... High-def games? Bioshock uses 8 gb of hard drive space. Being able to hold 100 of such games on your computer is not a trivial thing.

And I'm sure if game developers know that they have 100 gb to work with, they'd be more than eager to add higher resolution textures.

[phongn]

And I'm sure if game developers know that they have 100 gb to work with, they'd be more than eager to add higher resolution textures.

No, because that's also more work, and increases pressure on RAM and VRAM use.

[Uraniun235]

Who needs to carry around one terabyte of... anything?

Um... High-def games? Bioshock uses 8 gb of hard drive space. Being able to hold 100 of such games on your computer is not a trivial thing.

And I'm sure if game developers know that they have 100 gb to work with, they'd be more than eager to add higher resolution textures.

Er... why would we need to carry around 100 high-def games with us?

We already have 1TB conventional hard drives. They're less than $200 now.

[Sarevok]

Games in 1 TB range, if they existed, would be the wetdream of every incompetent noob programmer witting spaghetti code today.

[Pu-239]

Code doesn't take up that much space on disk, it's mostly textures and other data.

That'd be more accurate if you were talking about RAM or something. If they manage to replaced DRAM w/ it, then it'd be interesting (and would allow you to have huge textures- then again, Id's new engine is supposed to allow for that today, limited by disk size...)

[Solauren]

Code doesn't take up that much space on disk, it's mostly textures and other data.

Don't be to sure on that.

When I was writting a game in high school (I got third place at the competition I went to for it too, yah mean). I deliberately put the AI statements out as multi-line affairs instead of the much more size efficient 'if then loop' I used to generate them.

Partially it was for debugging purposes, and the other was because it was so fracking huge as a result, if anyone tried copying it and trying to pass it off as there own, it would be pretty damn obvious.

(Backstory: We were told to we'd be required to write a Tic-Tac-Toe program and have it ready as a sort of 'final project' worth 20% of our mark by April. Turns out, the 3 highest marks in the class got sent to the Competition)

[Starglider]

Don't be to sure on that.

When I was writting a game in high school (I got third place at the competition I went to for it too, yah mean). I deliberately put the AI statements out as multi-line affairs instead of the much more size efficient 'if then loop' I used to generate them.

Still irrelevant. Code size is ultimately bounded by how fast your developers can type, and guess what, they can't type all that fast. A million lines of code (e.g. the yearly output of a small-to-medium dev team) will still only take up the space of a single music track (post compilation, not including libraries). We're long past the point where any conceivable amount of code bloat can use up a significant amount of offline storage space, though it's still relevant for runtime performance (though not as much as it used to be).

[Solauren]

I beg forgiveness on my ignorance on file size (I'm a database programmer, not a game programmer) of modern components.

But how much bigger then say, your standard 'oh pretty picture' from the internet is the texture and model information for say, the 'main character' from a 3-D shooter.

i.e how big would the specs for Kyle Katarn from Jedi Outcast have been?

Because, if it's more then a few thousand kilobytes, then I throughly stand corrected.

[CaptainZoidberg]

But how much bigger then say, your standard 'oh pretty picture' from the internet is the texture and model information for say, the 'main character' from a 3-D shooter.

i.e how big would the specs for Kyle Katarn from Jedi Outcast have been?

Because, if it's more then a few thousand kilobytes, then I throughly stand corrected.

I know it's not quite what you asked for, but a typical Halo 1 map is 10 mb - 100 mb, and the sounds are 220 mb.

So in that case the size of the game content trumps the size of the code...

[Solauren]

Okay, that's way, way more then the typical file size I'm used to dealing with when it comes to games.

Okay, so code isn't affecting size anymore. Got it....

[Sarevok]

Executables for even modern games top at around ~ 5 MB. The textures and meshes can take several gigabytes. That should tell you something...

[Shogoki]

Get back to me when they're commercially viable and cost less than $500 a pop.

Hey, I don't know about you, but at $500 for a 1TB thumb drive, i'll buy 2.

[Winston Blake]

There's also procedural generation for extremely compact storage of game textures, meshes, music, etc.

One thing I could see extremely large storage being used for is holy-crap-retina-resolution 3D or VR movies. Lots and lots of movies (and tv shows).