Memory technology is reaching mind-blowing densities. The company Crossbar is making non-volatile memory chips (i.e. like flash memory, they don’t need power to retain data) that can
store one terabyte of data (1,000 gigabytes) on a single chip 200 square millimeters, about the size of a postage stamp. By comparison, the densest flash memory chips on the market today store 16 gigabytes on a single chip. The smallest such chip, introduced by Micron in May this year, is 144 square millimeters in area.
And the speed of access to the memory is also extremely fast:
Data can be accessed and written to crossbar memory fast enough to see it also possibly compete with DRAM, used as short-term memory, in computing devices. The technology is significantly more energy efficient than both flash and DRAM.
The technology will bring yet another huge jump in smartphone capabilities:
A new type of memory chip that a startup company has just begun to test could give future smartphones and other computing devices both a speed and storage boost. The technology, known as crossbar memory, can store data about 40 times as densely as the most compact memory available today. It is also faster and more energy efficient.
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