Visit Indian Travel Sites
Goa,
Kerala,
Tamil Nadu,
Andhra Pradesh,
Delhi,
Rajasthan,
Uttar Pradesh,
Himachal Pradesh,
Assam,
Sikkim,
Madhya Pradesh,
Jammu & Kashmir
Karnataka
|
Samsung's chips set to revolutionise mobile technology | Samsung Electronics have announced that it has begun mass production
of a new kind of memory chip that stores information by melting and freezing tiny
crystals. Called the phase-change memory (PCM), the idea was first proposed by
physicists in the 1960s, but it took long for them to develop the chip. The scientists
now expect that PCM would change mobile phones forever. PCM rests on a simple
concept- atoms that are neatly arranged in crystals conduct electrons better than
those jumbled up in a glass. Unlike conventional memory, which involves moving
electrons around a chip, PCM data would literally be frozen in place, even when
the machine is off, which means these devices could switch on nearly instantaneously.
But Matthias Wuttig, a physicist at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, says that
PCM, though simple in principle, is much harder to implement. The main problem
is with writing the information into the material-to write in a one or a zero,
the crystalline material has to be heated to high temperatures and refrozen, either
in a crystal or glassy form. In the 1970s and 1980s, scientists developed new
classes of crystalline materials in which the atoms were held together via very
weak bonds and thus the materials could shift from crystal to glass very quickly.
But turning that breakthrough into a working device was not easy and thus other
kinds of transistor-based memory, such as the flash memory currently installed
in most mobile phones and mp3 players, were closer to the market. Wuttig said
that at transistor sizes of a few tens of nanometres, a quantum mechanical phenomenon
called 'tunnelling' begins to come into play, which allows electrons to leak out
of the transistor, effectively destroying the memory. Because PCM memory doesn't
rely on charge, it can theoretically be used to create ever-smaller devices. In
fact, because the speed of PCM memory depends on how long it takes to melt and
refreeze the crystal, the smaller each crystal cell in the device, the faster
it becomes. Wuttig's group has recently conducted experiments with cells just
20 nanometres across, which can be switched in just 16 nanoseconds - far faster
than existing technology. And very soon, these memory chips may start appearing
in mobile phones. |
|
|
|
|
|