Progress in development of long-term computer memory

Science News : Computers store data in two different ways: short-term, capacitor-based dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and long-term, magnetic-disk or solid-state drives. Unlike the latter, the former stores data only while the computer is on. But DRAM is significantly faster to read from and write to and doesn’t degrade from overwriting the way long-term media do. For decades, researchers have been developing alternative data storage technologies that blend the capabilities of the two types. One of the alternatives is ferroelectric RAM , which applies a voltage to read individual bits. Because the process destroys the data, it then has to immediately rewrite it. This destructive reading procedure limits the lifespan of the media. Ramamoorthy Ramesh of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed an alternative FRAM that uses a nondestructive reading process: The device shines a light at individual bits and reads the current across them. The process increased the lifespan of the material to hundreds of millions of rewrites. FRAM is still faced with lower data densities and higher costs than solid state media, however, so it remains far from being ready for widespread commercial use.