If this is truly a breakthrough and not just another step towards optical RAM, then this story at The Register should put smiles on a lot of faces. Utilizing an indium gallium arsenide strip buried in gallium arsenide these researchers have found a way to make this material either transparent or opaque to light, and using that to dynamically record a 0 or 1. This would imply that the speed of the RAM would only be limited by how quickly the material can switch from one state to the other. These theoretical DIMMs would need a minute amount of power, the abstract states 30 nW as the predicted power draw, which could eliminate heatspreaders as we know them today. The security conscious may also be assuaged that the state will last for a matter of microseconds so there will be no more freezing RAM for snooping through later.
"Japanese researchers are claiming a breakthrough in all-optical memory, one of the key bottlenecks remaining in the optical communications world.
The high throughput of optical communications systems brings its own problem: any function that can’t be performed in the optical domain demands an opto-electric conversion, creating a bottleneck in the system. This has put a premium on research into optical switching, amplification and signal regeneration."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Samsung shows off 20nm PRAM @ SemiAccurate
- DDR4 shows up in the wild @ SemiAccurate
- Mutant heroes to rescue Ultrabooks from price trap @ The Register
- Dell Joins Rival HP on Growing List of ARM Server Makers @ DailyTech
- Intel Sandy Bridge RC6 Is Good To Go @ Phoronix
- This image contains a hidden audio track @ Hack a Day
- MWC 2012: NVIDIA Samples Tegra 3+, Tegra 4 to OEM Partners @ VR-Zone
- AMD Heaven GamExperience London Event Gallery @ HardwareHeaven