11-13-2003, 10:00 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Memory Made Of... Plastic?
Yes, you read that correctly. 
"A new memory technology promises to store more data at less cost than the expensive-to-build silicon chips used by popular consumer gadgets including digital cameras, cell phones and portable music players... Unlike flash memory found in consumer devices, the new technology can be written to only once, though it can be read many times. It acts in that respect like a non-rewriteable compact disc. But the new memory, which retains data even when there's no power, won't require a power-hungry laser or motor to read or write, and promises more capacity."
It doesn't look like it'll be a replacement for silicon anytime soon, but for write-once solutions, it might be a cheaper solution. Of course, the real question: is there a market for theoretically cheap write-once memory? There was a lot of fanfare for DataPlay, but it seems to have gone nowhere. Nevertheless, it's good to see new innovations in materials science... and there's a mention that they're working on write-many solutions as well in the long-term.
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11-13-2003, 10:44 AM
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2000 Posts And This is All I Get?
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 2,017
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Wow. CD-R/DVD-R killer ? 8O
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11-13-2003, 11:32 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 38
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I just hope that whatever form/interface they produce it in, they also create a writable silicon solution.
Otherwise the music industry will be back in their hayday again 
Oh, and if you look here: http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article2055.html it seems it's actually a plastic-silicon hybrid
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11-13-2003, 02:42 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 93
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This type of technology is long over due. Moving media storage is so "old fasioned" and restrictive. A cheap non-volitile sturdy memory median is what is needed.
It would be great to just plug in a slip of plastic into my future music player and not have to put up with the bulk and weight of motor driven players. Media that is cheap and disposable and not expensive flash memory.
I do not know if this soultion will do it but I look forwarded to the one that will.
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11-13-2003, 02:43 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 100
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If it's in a smaller form factor and the price point could fall to that of blank CD's today, I'm all for it.
CD's are starting to get too big to store efficiently. I'd love to have 1000 SD sized mem chips rather than 1000 CDs.
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11-13-2003, 04:47 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 2
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This technology could be great, if small enough, for rom modules for handhelds and phones like the nGage or GameBoys etc.
Arturo
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11-13-2003, 04:54 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 95
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by artax
This technology could be great, if small enough, for rom modules for handhelds and phones like the nGage or GameBoys etc.
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I still wouldn't want to nGage :twisted:
Suhit
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11-13-2003, 08:28 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 100
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by suhit
I still wouldn't want to nGage :twisted:
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Hah... Have to agree with you there. :mrgreen:
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11-13-2003, 10:11 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 301
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Re: Memory Made Of... Plastic?
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Originally Posted by Janak Parekh
There was a lot of fanfare for DataPlay, but it seems to have gone nowhere. |
The problem with DataPlay was that the standard was "backed" (i.e., controlled and ultimately aciddentally strangled) by music companies. My understanding is that they refused to license any OEM's to use the DataPlay media/drive technologies for any "audio players" other than did NOT limit themselves to DRM-restricted formats. In other words, there never was, and (because of restrictive licensing) never could have been a true DataPlay MP3 player unit. The only ones that actually made it to market (I remember seeing one in my local BestBuy some time ago) were only able to use a "DRM wrapped" MP3 audio file. (Think of it as an MP3 file with none of advantages of MP3 compared to Liquid Audio or WMA, etc.)
So it's really a mistake to think that the problem (failure) of DataPlay was not that people are not interested in a "micro-cdr" or some other very-dense and cheap new storage format. The lesson from DataPlay is that the market won't tollerate having a new storage product crammed down it's throat that heavily restricts what can be stored on it or where and how the data is accessed later.
Sony had to learn this lesson too. They tried to push their DRM-based ATRAC-3 players so hard that they also refused to license MemoryStick for any OEM trying to make a true MP3 player that uses MemoryStick. To my knowledge there still is no MS/MP3 player on the market, only MS/ATRAC-3 players. (One of the reasons for MemeoryStick's decline vs. SecureDigital, by the way.)
The lesson is that storage technologies introduced by content owners (record companies) often aren't trying to solve our storage problems as much as their piracy/DRM problems. When the products come out the consumers eventually catch on and the products either die (DataPlay) or if there is a big coroporate pride issue (Sony MemoryStick) they are kept alive on life-support.
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11-14-2003, 08:10 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 123
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Yet more technology we'll never see
About 20 years from now, we'll see a PC Magazine article on "What Ever Happened To...?" And it'll contain a big entry for plastic memory.
In the meanwhile, we'll be carrying keychain memory with 1 terabyte of storage, but requires a football-sized heatsink fan unit to keep cool.
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