staging.spectrum.ieee.org/jan07/comments/1696 -
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Last Visited: 3/2/2007
In a different computing category, Senior Associate Editor Samuel K. Moore writes in "Winner: Masters of Memory" that a new memory technology from Innovative Silicon, of Lausanne, Switzerland, may change the ground rules for microprocessor design.Called Z-RAM, for zero-capacitor dynamic random access memory, the design requires no new materials or extra processing steps in the fabrication process to attain higher levels of performance,no exotic semiconductors, no oddly structured parts, and no experimental insulators.Each memory cell is just a single transistor.
Moore writes that you can fit as much as 5 megabytes of Z-RAM into the space occupied by a single megabyte of today's conventional embedded memory.
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According to Moore, the Z-RAM has the potential to quintuple the amount of memory incorporated into microprocessor chips and make them both faster and cheaper.