BOFFINS working at the Arizona State University's Center for Applied Nanoionics say they have come up with a low-cost, low-power computer memory that could create a terabyte-sized thumb drive.

The drive uses a new technique for manipulating charged copper particles at the molecular scale. Memory is a tenth of the the cost and a thousand times energy-efficient as flash memory.

Top boffin Michael Kozicki said a a thumb drive using the memory could store a terabyte of information. He claimed that all the current limitations in portable electronic storage flee in the face of the technology. It would be finally possible to video your life and store it.

The technology is called programmable metallization cell (PMC). Instead of storing bits as an electronic charge it uses nanowires from copper atoms to record binary ones and zeros.

According to October's IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, which we get for the Dilbert comic, the technology can be built from materials commonly used in the memory industry, which should help keep manufacturing costs down.

Already Micron Technology, Qimonda and Adesto have licensed the technology from Arizona State's business spin-off, Axon Technologies.

It is expected that the first product containing the memory will hit the shops in 18 months.

More here. µ