back to article Boffins embiggen data storage space with 'phase-shifting' material

A team of researchers has found a way of manipulating Phase-Change Memory (PCM) – a material with special properties – so that it can transform into various states at once, allowing the boffins to create multi-level PCM cells. If all goes well, this should pave the way for development of the next generation of data storage media …

COMMENTS

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  1. Blofeld's Cat
    Coat

    Diamonds are forever...

    I suspect they could reduce production costs by using industrial diamonds rather than the nicely cut ones shown in the diagram.

    Unless of course they are operating from a converted oil platform off Baja California...

    "If at first you don't succeed, Mr. Kidd...."

    1. Pen-y-gors

      and ever, and ever...

      Even with industrial diamonds, if you need two diamonds per bit it's still going to be pretty pricey to build a 256GB drive.

      1. BristolBachelor Gold badge
        Trollface

        Re: and ever, and ever...

        Read the article, the guy said black white and grey, so it's 1½ bits per pair of diamonds. OK I'll get me coat.

        Oh and by the way, I wouldn't say that NAND is always non-volatile; the 7400 on my desk is very volatile :)

    2. Robert Heffernan
      Joke

      Re: Diamonds are forever...

      With those big diamonds, the researchers must be employes of Aperture Science

  2. Ryan 7

    We've already had NVRAM for years

    It's not tech capability that holding us back, it's cost.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    1000 times faster than flash

    hurray, this means that, instead of in a blink of an eyes, it'll access data in a blink of an eye. Can't be bad, Only for a fraction of a price increase you get this fabulous, revolutionaly, up to 1 MILION times faster* sd card, sir. Yes, we take all major cards, phone-taps, also blood, skin tissue and similar items of value. Book now, why wait?!

  4. Lghost
    Headmaster

    Please stop using "embiggen" and "bigup", and all such "chav speak" inspired non words, the illiterati have enough problems with basic grammar as it is, the insistence of some of your journalists in using expressions ( lifted from teenager's "facepalm" accounts ) in their titles and articles, really grates, adds nothing, and risks encouraging those readers whose mother tongue is not English, to do likewise in the mistaken assumption that their use is correct..

    If your excuse is that their use is meant as some sort of ironic joke..? it is not funny at all..

    1. borkbork
      Coat

      Embiggen?

      It's a perfectly cromulent word.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      So "embiggen" is a threat to literacy, but your comma splices, fear of hyphens, double periods and other eccentricities of punctuation are not?

      And "non words" [sic] is a prescriptivist fallacy. The only authentic rubric for deciding what constitutes a word in English is whether an author or speaker uses it as a word, and a substantial portion of the audience recognizes it as a word. Many neologisms pass that test, including ones coined in jest (as "embiggen" was - in an episode of The Simpsons, and not, in fact, by "chavs" or "teenagers").

  5. Local Group
    Happy

    Why not just say it was 'embiggened'?

    "If the full moon rising in the East struck you as unusually large Saturday night, you would be right. It did loom larger than usual. Though it's hardly a scientific term, it is what's known as a "supermoon." (@NedPotterABC)

    Supermoon? Couldn't that be confused with Rush dropping his pants and bending over?

    Why not just say the moon was embiggened?

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