Submitted by Thinking that HP’s memristors can’t arrive early enough on the market? Here’s competition already! A team at North Carolina State University, led by Dr Paul Franzon, has unveiled the “double floating-gate field effect transistor”, a component based on the same principles as flash memory which would allow to store data for “a couple of years” in around 15 nanoseconds.
A cool development. The SWITCHING time between the on and the off state is 15ns and this state can be preserved for a few years. The first time I read that it sounded like it could transfer two years of data in 15 nanoseconds! Granted that doesn’t make much sense!
How would you have said it ? I’m not a native English speaker, so I may make mistakes.
It read fine to me.
I think it’s just one of those sentences which shouldn’t be skimmed, but the actual content itself sounds like it’s written correctly.
I would remove the extra ‘s’ at the end of ‘allows’ though.
The sentence looks fine to me, but I would suggest removing the spaces before the question mark and exclamation mark. I think I recall that being common in French (I know I’ve seen it before), but I don’t think it’s really correct in English.
I confirm that, it’s a french typographical trick. Something which Kroc keeps remembering me about, and which I keep forgetting when I write due to the years of habit behind.
Will fix this once I have access to a network connexion where ports other than HTTP aren’t blocked.
Used to be common in English to. Actually, I rather like it and only don’t use it myself because it allows the line to break inappropriately unless you use some custom CSS.
… software makers, especially OS names. They’ll find a way to screw up. The first two uses of that type of memory for me would be 1- starting or resuming from hibernation/sleep instantly and 2- accessing data while most of the computer is off/sleeping/hibernating.
No matter how fast the hardware got in the 20 years that I’ve been fiddling with computers, the experience got worse and worse in the terms of things that matter for me: waiting time, bugs, customization possibilities, bloat, DRM (actually, the lack of it), being in control of the PC. Sorry for being that pessimistic but I foresee more abuse than benefit out of that (I mean, for me as a user).
BTW, I don’t trust hardware makers either. After all these years, we still have to scour the web for the appropriate driver, and we still have to check “compatibility lists” before buying a printer or a USB dongle for Wifi? And the situation isn’t better with CPU makers who change sockets every now and then.
Edited 2011-01-26 13:01 UTC
Sorry, but what has any of that got to do with advances with storage technology?
I’m really not sure I understand the point you’re making.
“advances with storage technology” are advances in hardware, just like multicore CPUs are advances in chip technology. I guess hardware advances need the appropriate software to be useful, that’s where drivers enter the stage, right? That’s also probably the reason why I’ve heard people say that a multicore CPU is useless on Windows 2000.
And until now, in my opinion, software vendors excel in not making a good use of advances in hardware, notably by inflating the sizes of their products beyond what’s understandable to me. “A good use” as in “a use that seems to exploit the hardware advances to the fullest extent”.
That’s what my previous rant was supposed to convey. I hope I’m clear now.
Multicore CPUs depend on the kernel’s capbility at multi-threading and third-party software developers in writing threadded applications. It’s not really a driver issue.
Furthermore, multicore CPUs are not useless on Windowss 2000. In fact, I have a SMP Win2k Pro box at home (granted it’s dual processor rather than single-processor, multi-core, but from the software side of things remain the same). Windows 2000 worked wonderfully with it.
I see your point now but I think you have your argument backwards. You shouldn’t be looking pessimistically at new hardware because software houses can’t develop applications to make good use of it or (more often the case) write lazy / unnecessarily bloated applications expecting the hardware advances to pick up the slack. New hardware is a good thing – particularly in the storage arena where bottlenecks are known and don’t exist due to shoddy drivers nor poor 3rd software development.
I do agree that some software developers should be sacked and I know of plenty of “mission critical” solutions that are so badly programmed it’s actually quite scary. But sadly this will always be a fact of life. So I personally think it’s a bit depressing to tarnish new advances as pointless.
OK, but I didn’t tarnish anything or think it’s pointless: I’ve even cited the applications where that new storage would be useful to me.
I didn’t say it’s a driver issue either. Both the driver example and the windows 2000 thing were meant to illustrate “I guess hardware advances need the appropriate software to be useful”. I’m starting to think I write a very bad English.
Sorry mate. It’s me. I’m half asleep.
I’m running one of the higher end revisions of win2k (I forget which one) at home as a desktop OS on a quadcore cpu. Works great
I actually prefer Win2000 to XP , Vista and 7. In fact I think it’s the best desktop OS MS have released.
I know many wouldn’t agree with me, but each to their own.
My bro uses it still. It runs the latest browsers he likes and still runs his games. Latest VLC and flash work great and Intel still pumps out windows 2k drivers. So its definitely a blast to use on modern hardware. It is retardedly snappy.
You can’t use the latest Internet Explorer though!
loo, I’m OK with that :p
hehehe +1