Nantero Exits Stealth: Using Carbon Nanotubes for Non-Volatile Memory with DRAM Performance & Unlimited Endurance

NRAM is made out of carbon nanotubes, which is the strongest material known to man and provides far better thermal and electrical conductivity than any other known material.

The way NRAM works is in fact relatively simple. Essentially there are two nanotubes, which have low resistance when in physical contact and high resistance when separated. The amount of resistance then determines whether the cell is considered to be programmed as ‘0’ or ‘1’. Program operation (or “SET” as Nantero calls it) works by applying a voltage on one of the nanotubes, which will then attract the other nanotube and create a bond. The SET operation is very fast and takes only picoseconds, which is on par with or better than DRAM latency. The bond is kept in tact by Van der Waal’s interactions and is practically immortal with data retention terms even in 300°C is over ten years. In an erase operation (or RESET as Nantero calls it) the voltage is simply applied in the other direction, which will “heat up” (given the scale it’s more like vibration) the nanotube contacts and cause them to separate. Given that carbon nanotubes are one of the strongest materials in the world, the write/erase endurance is practically infinite as independent university study has shown Nantero’s NRAM technology to have over 1011 P/E cycles (for your information, 1011 translates to 100 billion).

This sounds like the future. How much will a 6” cube of 2nd or 3rd generation nanotube storage be able to store? I bet it would blow your mind.