Watch out: punched-hole card computing is coming back...

... in nano-technology form. Check out this description of the Millipede memory technology:

Remember the old paper computer punch cards? Well, change the cardboard for a nano-scale polymer stretched over a silicon substrate, add a few thousand read/write heads, and scale the whole thing down and you’d be looking at a Millipede Memory.

Millipede employs an array of micro-electromechanical silicon composite read/write heads—located on a x-y grid—to punch indentations into a thin polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) polymer film, coating a silicon substrate. Each head is constructed with a bi-metal conductor designed to transfer heat into the polymer material. During a write cycle, heating of the bi-metal head bends it toward the polymer material, and subsequently melts an indentation into the surface. Indentation locations—or individual bit cells—can then be detected by moving the substrate under the most convenient read/write head. If an indentation exists the head falls into the “hole” and heat conducts from the now cooler read/write head into the polymer, alters the resistive characteristic of the head, and may be detected as a binary one or an “on” condition. Absence of a indentation—or a plain flat surface—has very little contact with the head due to the head’s spiked shape, preventing significant thermal transfer, and therefore any negligible resistance change. In this case a zero or “off” condition is returned.

Since the polymer isn’t destroyed by indentation, information may be erased using a head to displace polymer to restore a flat surface.

Cool!

Next, it'll be platform shoes, afros, tank-tops, and real flares!

posted by Blakey UK @ 12:45 pm