What your PC will looks like in 2 years!

I've heard about a very interesting topic of current research: the M-RAM

Some thinks that commercial hardware will be available in the next 2 years, this techno will lead to non-volatile RAM (Memory).
That's mean that we will be able to turn on our computer without rebooting files, OS, processes will be stored into the RAM even when the power supply is off. With a R&W of nanoseconds scale.
That's just a revolution!

The idea is to use magnetic fields (M stand for Magnetic): 2 tiny pieces of metal separated by a electric proof slice represent a bit of memory. When both pieces are polarized in the same direction => bit=1 and when not => bit=0.

Thanx to this techno the memory RAM can be stable for about 10 years. For instance you write a document, you will not bother to save it into flash, you could go abroad for 2 monthes when you'll get back & turn the PC on, your "in process" document will be gently witing for you.

One direct implication is for environment: instead of having a screen saver your PC could power down until activity is back, imagine the power that could be saved in a coporation where there is thousands of PC each consuming 100W.

Quote:

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M-RAM, magnetic random access memory makes use of miniscule magnets to store the 0's and 1's of binary data. This actually cuts down power consumption drastically. With all major memory producers conducting research in this field, the new memory chip may hit the market by 2005.

According to Jeff Mailloux, director of D-RAM marketing at Micron, D-RAM is the perfect memory. As things stand today introducing the new advanced chip is not the big deal; the task ahead is to make it cost effective.

This new technology is a spin-off of advanced research in the field of Spin electronics or spintronics. Spin, the essential quantum property of an electron, behaves akin a magnet. By aligning or polarising these tiny magnets to go in a uniform pattern they can be used to signify the elements of the binary code. This exploitation of the spins can be stretched to cover the area of memory as well.

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That is way cool, never seen or heard of that before. It will definatly be a big step forward for tech!

Wow! I'm impressed! To say the least...

I just wonder how they are going to protect data in this so called M-RAM...

Right now... it is rather easy to do a memory dump... though, a memory dump of an OS and all the data on it would be huge!
But, much faster than the copying of a hard drive.

We'll have to keep an eye on this technology.

If you want to read more bout it... here are a couple of links.
I couldn't find too much more.

I'd suspect that they are keeping details to a minimum...

http://www.cnrs.fr/cw/en/pres/compress/MRAM.htm
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/chip-tech-01d.html

And all along, I thought the next big step in computer technology was going to be improving the seek time to access data on a HD. What a novel solution... do away with the HD all together! :D

Networker: Mind giving us the link to where you found that quote?

I'm concerned about the security of that memory too.

How about storage of data on holographic drives? I though that would be killer. no moving parts in a HDD, no HDD crashes, burns ups, etc. etc.

Korp: I heard of a guy using holographic imaging on DVD's... clamed he could fit upwards of 1TB on a single DVD. I will see if I can dig up some of those links, very interesting reading!

hmm, except on my laptops, more than half of the rebooting I do is to solve a problem with a service or driver of some sort, or a frozen application. The rest is because I installed a new app, or a patch that requires a reboot.

It seems that remebering the state of services and files, etc, might create some problems in that area, and have no benefit at all except for laptops?

Sounds neat for sure, but Im a bit skeptical about its real usefullness.

Wow, and herein we welcome new strands of virii that don't have to worry about hiding themselves in start-up menus, now they will always be open, joy.

just an update on MRAM...

It is a month or two old though...

Quote:

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With both Motorola and IBM firmly lined up behind a single contender, the five-year search for a "universal RAM" technology offering a combination of non-volatility and high-speed random access appears to be all but over.

According to Motorola, samples of the new magnetoresistive random access memory, or MRAM, chips will be distributed to developers by the end of 2003, and cell phones and PDAs incorporating MRAM should be on sale by mid-2004.

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Continue here.

Impressive.

It sounds like it might work for phones, palmtops & digital cameras. My concern is that solid state memory solutions have always been very expensive?

I can pick up 240Gb of harddrives for around £200........................how much would that cost of this stuff :(

If it were DDR Ram I guess that would be over £2,000 these days?


Just a few thoughts

I read about this a while back, and as some of the links indicate, IBM is a big player in this market, or I think they may well be the only player,,they have a patent on this technology and have been working on this for a while (last 25 yrs or so) even with the military..

However non-volatile memory is not new concept,..it exists widely today (flash for example in routers) but it is very expensive,,,The trick was to develop non-volatile RAM which can be produced cheaply, thus MRAM....Very excited to see its first deployment.....

Also, computer makers could have made memory that exists today out of SRAM instead of dynamic RAM,, 10x or so faster, however SRAM is very expensive as well and so we only get a small taste of it in (level I/II cache.....)

Quote:

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It sounds like it might work for phones, palmtops & digital cameras.

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they already use non-vol memory in some PDA's, have you ever tryed to turn them off but theres no off button just a suspend, thats what its doing.

sounds pretty cool, although surely people will be able to store malicous code on here that will live on after a reboot,

the hologram stuff is amazing there was an article about it on slashdot a while back, pretty intersting.

both of these are the future, but itll be a while before they drop to the prices of todays storage devices, which isnt great. still almost £0.80 - £1 for a Gb, so the price soon adds up. And there seems to be a floor that the old stuff will never drop below, like i wanted a 500mb harddisk for a project resently and shops were trying to charge me +£10, i wasnt going to pay that. i went to a garage/ boot sale and got 3 500mb drives for £1 which was more to my liking :D

i2c

How to create a boot disk for windows XP. I'm using the sysyem and my computer seems to be corruped boot files.

In coming 2 yrs my PC is going to be an antique piece to Hack still secure in those years :D

Shaddys26,

Hi, I am afraid you have posted to the wrong forum

You should be in Antionline: How do I? or What is?


Might I suggest that you "edit" your post (one of the little purple tabs at the top), highlight and copy your text, post it in the forum where people might better be able to help you, and delete the original post here (one of the edit options)

While I am responding, you might give us some information:

What makes you think your XP boot files are corrupt.............what happens when you boot?

Hope that this helps

Cheers