Chip Startup Claims Miraculous Storage Recipe

US-based semiconductor startup Nanochip claims to have made significant progress in its array-based memory research that will result in soon-to-arrive storage prototypes with immediate shipment. According to Gordon Knight, Nanochip CEO, the new memory will be efficient for at least 10 generations.

The new kind of flash memory technology is alleged to be more reliable than the NAND flash and will allow researchers to increase the storage density exponentially. Stefan Lai, one of the members of Nanochip's technical advisory board, claims that Nanochip's technology is totally different from what we are used to nowadays.

The NAND flash technology usually doubles its number of transistors per square inch once every two years. However, it is alleged to reach its ultimate limits around the 45- or 32-nanometer node, where conventional lithography won't be efficient anymore.

"Moore's Law is driven by lithography," he stated. "Every two years, you need to buy this new machine that allows you to print something that's smaller and finer."

Nanochip's technology, the array-based memory uses a grid of microscopic probes that perform read/write operations to a storage platform. Unlike in the conventional NAND flash technology, the storage area isn't delimited using lithography lines, but rather by the movement of probes. According to Lai, the company will be able to tweak the probes in order to move a single atom at a defined time.

"If Nanochip can move the probes one-tenth the distance, for example, they can get 100 times the density with no change in the lithography," says Lai. "You don't have to buy all these new machines," he stated.

If the company's estimations are accurate, the next 10 years could bring on the market chips with storage capacities exceeding 1 TB per unit. However, Knight says that the first generation of memory chips will arrive in 2010 and will be able to store roughly 100 GB of data.