Reshaping the Architecture of Memory

Nrbelex writes: Stuart S. P. Parkin, an I.B.M. research fellow largely unknown outside a small fraternity of physicists, thinks he is poised to bring about a breakthrough that could increase the amount of data stored on a chip or a hard drive by a factor of a hundred. If he proves successful in his quest, he will create a "universal" computer memory, one that can potentially replace dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, and flash memory chips, and even make a "disk drive on a chip" possible. It could begin to replace flash memory in three to five years, scientists say.