A new type of memory chip that extends battery life and improves the performance of gadgets from cell phones to PCs is under development by Motorola Inc.
The device integrates traditional magnetic materials used for memory storage–such as cobalt, nickel and iron–on a semiconductor silicon chip. By combining functions onto a single chip, Motorola developers hope their new device, called magnetoresistive random access memory, or MRAM, will replace multiple memory devices now used to make electronic appliances operate.
Last week Motorola unveiled a 1-megabit universal memory chip based on the new technology.
Saied Tehrani, who directs the project for Motorola, said that the device holds its memory even when shut off and not getting electricity. This means that a cell phone using MRAM would “wake up” at once when turned on rather than having to take time to boot up as is now the case. Also, the new devices would deliver more reliable performance.
“If you are working now and your personal computer experiences a glitch, you may lose your work when you reboot,” Tehrani said. “That’s why we’re told to frequently save our work. But when your PC has MRAM and experiences a glitch, you won’t lose anything because the memory is non-volatile.”
MRAM-powered devices use less electricity, so the battery life of portable devices will be extended, he said.
Motorola has done much MRAM development already, but it wants to get the product into the market within two years.
The company has agreed to team with two other semiconductor-makers, Philips Electronics and STMicroelectronics, to complete MRAM development and to jointly market the devices.
“With these partners, we can get MRAMs to market much faster than Motorola could do alone,” Tehrani said. “We want this technology to proliferate broadly.”
Changing competition: In an interesting turnabout, the head of AT&T Corp. has concluded that America’s telecommunications law is fostering competition in local phone service.
Last week AT&T’s chairman, C. Michael Armstrong, cited state policies in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and California as making it attractive for his firm to lease local Bell network facilities to offer competitive local phone service. He made his remarks in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.
A bit more than a year ago, Armstrong was complaining that the Bells had stifled competition and suggested AT&T might pull out of the local phone market in New York.
A string of decisions by state regulators has turned that situation around, Armstrong said in his speech, and a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court this spring also bolstered competition.
“Today AT&T local service is available to more than 20 million households around the United States,” Armstrong said. “If the states continue to choose competition over monopoly, AT&T local service will be available to more than 50 percent of Bell consumers by the end of this year.”
Nano punch: The old computer punch cards–don’t staple, fold or mutilate–that went out of style a few decades ago for most applications except for voting may make a high-tech comeback.
Researchers at IBM Corp.’s Zurich research lab report using a nano-size set-up that resembles a punch card to store data on the order of 25 million textbook pages within the space of a postage stamp.
IBM’s new approach uses thousands of tiny pen tips to punch indentations onto the surface of a thin plastic sheet. These indentations represent bits of information to be remembered by the machine, a physical form of memory similar to the various holes punched into cards.
The tips use heat to make the indentations then work at a cooler temperature to read them. The equipment can erase and overwrite the thin plastic film for reuse.
By taking advantage of nanotechnology that enables engineers to work on the scale of individual molecules, the researchers believe their new approach will vastly increase the amount of memory they can pack into a tiny space.
“Since a nanometer-scale tip can address individual atoms, we anticipate further improvements far beyond even this fantastic terabit milestone,” said Gerd Binning, a Nobel laureate and one of the leaders of IBM’s project.
The researchers have proven their idea in principle and are building a prototype machine. They believe the concept can be developed into commercial products.
Written in the stars: For people who can’t resist carving their initials into tree trunks, promoters of space travel have an offer that’s hard to turn down: the chance to put your name on an asteroid.
A California-based organization, The Planetary Society, is making the offer through its affiliate, The Planetary Society of Japan.
The groups hope to etch hundreds of thousands of names on aluminum foil sheets that will be enclosed inside a softball-size target marker, which will be dropped on an asteroid as part of a space mission launched from Japan toward year’s end.
The mission’s goal is to bring back a sample from the asteroid. The Japanese group has collected some 160,000 names for the project. Deadline for submitting your name is early July.
Names can be submitted through the planetary society’s Web site (www.planetary.org).
