A number of start-ups are tinkering with technology that could enhance or replace hard drives, flash memory cards and other storage devices. The new technology will benefit consumers, but, just as important, reduce the onerous capital budgets facing manufacturers.
England's NanoMagnetics, for instance, has developed a method for inserting a magnetised particle inside a sphere of ferritin, a protein produced by animals. Assembled in arrays, the magnetised protein globs can be flipped to represent 1s and 0s, the basic units of digital information.
"I'll go to conferences and people will ask, 'This stuff is a protein. Can you eat it?'" said Eric Mayes, NanoMagnetics' founder and CEO.
On one level, the mission of these companies is a Pyrrhic quest. Hard-drive manufacturers regularly report financial losses and, until recently, profits in flash memory often proved elusive. Moreover, both industries are notoriously conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies.
Advocates, though, believe that circumstances that are transpiring will start to pry the door open to experimentation. For one thing, the cost-benefit equation for producers is getting extraordinarily steep. A gigabyte of hard-drive space currently sells for around AU$2 at retail outlets. Flash memory is also declining in price. Factories to build these devices, however, can cost billions, and research budgets can be arduous.
At the same time, advocates claim they can achieve far greater densities than is possible with existing technologies.
"I can see us doing 20 to 50 times the capacity per (chip) than they do," said Nanochip CEO Gordon Knight, referring to flash memory makers. His company is a Fremont, Calif.-based start-up that has received a rare venture investment from Microsoft.
Cranking up the heat
Heat is a problem for most semiconductor manufacturers, but it is the key to Nanochip's technology. A microscopic probe hovering above a piece of silicon quickly heats a point on the silicon to over 600 degrees Celsius. Almost instantly, the silicon crystal beneath the probe becomes amorphous, and thus gets read as a 0. When it cools, it crystallises, and the area registers as a 1.
4%
2%
