IBM develops 'instantaneous' memory, 100x faster than flash

[zarx]

Soleron said:

zarx said:

Soleron said:
IBM come out with a new experimental memory type every five minutes but none of them make it to actual products.

@zarx

If the transistors can only be made on a scale ~50x larger than silicon that's its entire advantage negated, and I think that's likely,

Currently yes but that is why we don't have graphene chips now in 5-10 years we should have solved that problem if not moved on to something else entirely.

Well CMOS is good down to 11nm according to Intel.

By the time we need something better than 11nm, process R&D costs will be so high that no one will be able to afford the next transition for a while. If you need to spend more than 1.3 billion dollars every two years, I'm not sure any company other than Intel will want to do it. And if there's no competition there is no advancement.

The semiconductor industry is currently worth over 100 billion a year and is forcast to continue it's trend of increasing by ~15% (last year was up 17.9%) even if it slows down it's no likely to stop even if research will move away from CMOS shrinking and more towords alternative meterials (graphane) or even 3D processors.  Even if Intels competitors fall behind, Intel will still be compeled to develop better tech because their business model relies on customers buying a new chip every few years, they may slow down a tiny bit and prices will certainly increase. But advancement won't stop until no advancements can be made.

Besides IBM is still up there with R&D, AMD is barely hanging in there, Nvidia could do well once they move into the SOC space in a bigger way and Samsung and Toshiba are both rising fast, Samsung especially with all the phone and tablet chips they are making now.