Totally New Digital Products Ahead

Cramming more data into less space on a memory chip or a hard drive has been the crucial force propelling consumer electronics companies to make ever smaller devices.

If Stuart Parkin proves successful in his current quest at the San Jose IBM Research Center, he will create a “universal” computer memory, one that can potentially replace dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, and flash memory chips, and even make a “disk drive on a chip” possible.

It could begin to replace flash memory in three to five years. Not only would it allow every consumer to carry data equivalent to a college library on small portable devices, but a tenfold or hundredfold increase in memory would undoubtedly unleash the creativity of engineers who would develop totally new entertainment, communication and information products.