Scientists at the University of Melbourne in Australia have created the world’s smallest diamond ring, measuring a measly 5 microns (millionths of a meter) in diameter and 300 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in thickness.

Granted, this tiny ring probably isn’t what you want to use to propose. However, if you happen to be a scientist developing quantum information processing, then this ring just might be a fit for you.

The ring is used as part of a device that can produce and detect single particles of light, called photons. These photons, set in different states, can carry information. However, unlike today’s computer memory which can hold either a 1 or 0 at each bit, they can hold both states at once.

If scientists can figure out how to take advantage of this property, they could expand the possibilities for computer memory and storage. This is a brand new development, so applications for the ring are obviously very scant. Hopefully we will see some clever uses in time, such as using the ring to increase the amount of data we can store in a certain amount of space.

Let’s face it, today’s computer memory and storage is far from perfect. Scientists at the Technical University of Berlin are trying to get us a bit closer.

There are three main types of storage and memory today. DRAM (dynamic random access memory), the memory inside your computer, is fast but can’t keep data for long – it must be refreshed 100 times per second to maintain its data.

Flash memory, the memory used in memory sticks and some devices like the iPod nano, can store data for long periods of time without refreshing. However, it writes information about 1000 times slower than DRAM. Read more »

San Jose-based company MetaRAM has achieved something that none of us expected. They have accelerated memory technology development by 2-4 years with their new DIMMs while being able to offer them at a much cheaper price.

How did they do it? MetaRAM has created a chipset which allows up to four times more mainstream DRAMs to be integrated into an existing stick of memory while fooling the computer into thinking it’s just one big piece.

For example, a 1GB DRAM is much cheaper than a 2GB one, and the new chipset allows manufacturers to just use two of the 1GB DRAMs instead of the 2GB one for a huge cost reduction. Now think of that on a massive scale: MetaRAM is advertising that you can put a quarter-terabyte (256GB) of memory into a server at as little as 10% of the cost. “That’s insane,” you say. “Why didn’t I think of that?” Well, we’re with you on that one.

The technology seems absolutely brilliant, and it’s a wonder why no one has thought of it before. Hopefully MetaRAM can lower the prices on consumer memory as well so we can start seeing mainstream computers with 16GB or 32GB of memory.

Read the press release here [pdf].

U.S. researchers have discovered a material that can create rewritable holograms. A layer of the material can record a holographic image, erase it, and replace it with a new one in a few minutes. The current rate is slow, but the researchers seem confident that they can get the material to refresh at the speeds of video around 30 times per second. With some advances in this technology we could see 3D displays come to life.

This material can also store rewritable data through the depth of a hologram. This is a big step up from today’s holographic discs which are read only. The new approach could lead to much larger capacities of computer memory.

This is a small although important advance in the field. Though not perfected yet, the technology could lead to some great things in the future, and we’re excited for when that time comes.

For information about how this work, read the full article at NewScientist.
Photo: University of Arizona/Nasser Peyghambarian