Molecular Memory Advances In The Lab
by
Randy Mears
In my recent blog entry About Moore’s Law, I focused on a couple of advancements that would help keep Moore’s Law alive and well for many years to come. Today I found this newly published article about molecular memory density. Even though this technology is still in the early stages of research and development, it highlights another important example of how digital circuit fabrication may change as we move into the future. With current memory densities of 1.79 gigabits per square centimeter using silicon technologies, molecular memory technologies, as described in this research, promise initial implementations with more than a fifty-fold increase, to 100 gigabits per square centimeter. That seems like a big increase, on the surface, but if Moore’s law holds and silicon density doubles every two years, silicon will be at 100 gigabits per square centimeter in just under 12 years. In other words, on the basis of this research alone, molecular memories only offer a density advantage if they make it to production in less than 12 years (granted I may be oversimplifying here).
Of course, once these memories do hit the market, they will need to advance at least as fast as silicon if they are to dominate. In the end the determining factor for the dominant technology (molecular versus silicon) may be based purely on their comparative density-growth curves.
