Straits Times / Singapore Dec 14, 2010 Scientists claim microchip breakthrough
TAIPEI - TAIWANESE scientists on Tuesday unveiled an advanced microchip technology which they claimed marks a breakthrough in piling ever more memory into ever smaller spaces. The scientists said they had succeeded in producing a circuit measuring just nine nanometres across - one nanometre is equal to one billionth of a metre. 'Researchers used to believe that 20 nanometres was the limit for microchip technologies,' said Ho Chia Hua, who heads the team behind the project at the state-run National Nano Device Laboratories. A chip using the new memory technology has about 20 times the storage capacity of memory units now available on the market and consumes just one 200th of the electricity, the scientists said. The benefits of greater memory and reduced electricity consumption are highly sought in the manufacture of electronic gadgets like smart phones and tablet computers. Using such technology, a chip the size of one square centimetre will be capable of storing one million pictures or 100 hours of 3D movies, said Yang Fu Liang, the director general of the Laboratories. -- AFP -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
