CSC 480 Etc

Pretty much everything else...mostly interesting link, I reckon

Apr 12, 2006

Nanotube RAM, NRAM, is a possible (probable?) next-generation of computer memory (and secondary memory?).

Press announcement from Oct 4, 2005 of the successful creation of an NRAM wafer:

www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=/news/news_single.html?id%3D4904

The leading company (I believe) in this technology is Nantero:

Their home page: www.nantero.com
And a cool little flash movie explaining how NRAM memory works (movie link at the bottom of the page): www.nantero.com/mission.html

This technology got an award (and a nice description of its potential) at:

www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/feature_emerging.asp?p=6 ...

Did you catch some of those numbers? Nanotubes have the potential of storing trillions of bits per square centimeter. By my math, that a terabyte (1 trillion bytes) in a square inch of chip. And of course, lower power, faster access, static memory, resistant to radiation and other environmental nastiness... Jeez!

Mar 29, 2006

Our logic templates and where I bought them (only 5 bucks!):

They're called "Timely Templates"... http://www.timelytemplates.com/f_electric/Telectric.htm
I bought them here at artstuff... http://www.artstuff.net/timely_flow_chart.htm

Mar 28, 2006

I blathered for 5-10 minutes on transistors in lecture yesterday. Here are two nice introductory web pages from Wikipedia if you're interested in a little more:

Transistors... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor
CMOS transistors, one of the most popular flavor of transistors... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMOS

Many of the courses taught by the University of Illinois Computer Science Department have supporting web sites, like this one, eh. Anyway, it is interesting to compare what is happening with the "big boys" in Champaign to up here at North Central. The closest fit to our class in Champaign is called CS 231 Computer Architecture. Illinois is much more hardware-oriented than we are... their 400-level class is a VLSI design class where full-chip design is taught. Anyway, their CS 231 uses our Mano text, so take a peak:

U of I CS 231... http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/class/sp06/cs231/