Originally published July 15 2005
Tiny levers could be the next thing in computer storage
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Nanomech memory, developed by Cavendish Kinetics in the Netherlands, stores data using thousands of electro-mechanical switches that are toggled up or down to represent either a one or zero as a binary bit.
Billions of tiny mechanical levers could be used to store songs on future MP3 players and pictures on digital cameras.
As bizarre as the idea might sound, researchers at a Dutch company have already demonstrated that miniscule mechanical switches can be used to store data using less power than existing technologies and with greater reliability.
Nanomech memory, developed by Cavendish Kinetics in the Netherlands, stores data using thousands of electro-mechanical switches that are toggled up or down to represent either a one or zero as a binary bit.
Each switch is a few microns long and less than a micron wide - roughly one-hundredth the width of a human hair.
Introducing a miniscule voltage to an electrode below a lever causes it to bend forwards until it makes contact.
Thanks to intermolecular forces on this scale, once flipped, a lever will also maintain its position, even when the voltage is switched off.
Repeating the feat across thousands of switches makes it possible to store something as complex as a computer program in Nanomech memory.
This is suitable for simple microcontrollers - the tiny computers used to operate commonplace electric motors found, for example, in cars and consumer electronics products.
But eventually the company hopes to stack many more levers together, boosting memory capacity to several gigabytes.
"That's the long term aim," says Charles Smith at Cambridge University, UK, who is a chief technology officer at Cavenish Kinetics.
"We want to put millions and millions on an individual chip."
He adds that the memory technology's resilience to radiation should also make it suitable for use aboard satellites and other spacecraft.
This is because cosmic radiation can cause space-borne computers to suddenly malfunction by flipping bits stored in memory.
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