Magnetised protein globules talk in binary code
Published: 26 Jul 2004 10:45 BST
Molten silicon, designer molecules, and protein globules from a cow. Someday, one of these materials could be used to store data in cellphones and PCs.
A number of start-ups are tinkering with technology that could enhance or replace hard drives, flash memory cards and other storage devices. The new technology will benefit consumers, but, just as important, reduce the onerous capital budgets facing manufacturers.
England's NanoMagnetics, for instance, has developed a method for inserting a magnetised particle inside a sphere of ferritin, a protein produced by animals. Assembled in arrays, the magnetised protein globs can be flipped to represent 1s and 0s, the basic units of digital information.
"I'll go to conferences and people will ask: 'This stuff is a protein. Can you eat it?'" said Eric Mayes, NanoMagnetics' founder and chief executive.
On one level, the mission of these companies is a Pyrrhic quest. Hard-drive manufacturers regularly report financial losses and, until recently, profits in flash memory often proved elusive. Moreover, both industries are notoriously conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies.
Advocates, though, believe that circumstances that are transpiring will start to pry the door open to experimentation. For one thing, the cost-benefit equation for producers is getting extraordinarily steep. A gigabyte of hard-drive space currently sells for around 50 cents at retail outlets. Flash memory is also declining in price. Factories to build these devices, however, can cost billions, and research budgets can be arduous.
At the Semicon West conference in San Francisco in July, Paolo Gargini, director of technology strategy at Intel, noted that the chip industry has taken the first tentative steps toward adopting new manufacturing and design methods because of the cost and scientific difficulties that are ahead.
At the same time, advocates claim they can achieve far greater densities than is possible with existing technologies.
"I can see us doing 20 to 50 times the capacity per (chip) than they do," said Nanochip chief executive Gordon Knight, referring to flash memory makers. His company is a start-up that has received a rare venture investment from Microsoft.
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