About Technology

By Bob Randooke

Have you guys been noticing how computer hard drive prices have been going down very much lately. Though there are quite a few factors that are the causes for this such as the current recession that we are and the technology keeps improving but there are also other technologies on the horizon that could revolutionize our drive technology to the point that current hard drives available today could become obsolete.

Here I will talk about one major technology that could revolutionize the computer industry just as much or even more than the Internet revolution did during the late 1990s. The new hard drive technology that I am talking about is called NRAM. NRAM or nonvolatile random access memory is a hard drive technology that is based on mechanical position of carbon nano tubes that are deposited on small substrates, and because the NRAM technology is based on small size nanotubes this will allow you to carry a huge amount of memory in a very small space. The current company that is developing the NRAM technology is called Nantero.

Now, besides the difference in size between the nano tubes and what DRAM (DRAM has a minimum size limit that it can be built to) currently has to offer there is also an added benefit that NRAM has over DRAM in that DRAM requires a certain amount of power to refresh it, while NRAM does not require any power source at all to refresh its memory even after the power source that is required to refresh it is removed.

Another energy-saving benefits to NRAM as opposed to DRAM is that the power that is needed to write to the device used is much lower than it would be for DRAM. The RAM has to build up a charge on its plates to get powered up. Most people will not notice this but this is a tremendous energy saving benefits that will cut down on the amount of electricity needed to not only power up our computers but to keep them turned off.

NRAM in theory can operate at a much better efficiency than DRAM and it will be much less dense than DRAM and eventually much less expensive. Imagine having an instant on computer where you just push the on button and your computer is powered up right there on the spot without waiting 10 to 30 seconds or even a minute for this to happen.

Imagine being able to store hundreds of terabytes of information on your hard drive. The possibilities to this technology and to the amount of memory that your computer can store in its hard drives is almost limitless. The low energy needed to power up and to keep the NRAM device going is even much less than flash memory and this is another area that the NRAM technology can enter into. Imagine being able to take an MP3 device as small as your hand with you anyplace you go that has a 3 TB storage capacity. The marketing capacity for this technology is in the hundreds of billions of dollars and could reach into the trillions of dollars later on. NRAM is a computer hard drive technology revolution that is waiting to happen. Now whether it happens in a few years or in five years this will be the most exciting new technology in the computer hard drive sector that has ever come about. Nantero has attracted all the big names in the computing industry and technology including HP, LSI and ON semiconductor. All of these major technology guys are either looking into experimenting with NRAM in their labs are actually trying to produce the chips themselves. It seems to me now that Nantero will probably license the technology out to big companies like these.

I can't wait for this technology to hit the market as I think it will revolutionize the way we store computer memory in a way that we are not currently used to doing. The energy savings of this hard drive technology couldn't come at a better time in the world that is energy starved World.

Author writes about new technologies in the Computer Desktops industry to show how desktop computers will change in the upcoming years.

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