Cube Could Make Storage a Small Problem

Researchers at UC Irvine and UC San Diego have invented a prototype of a three-dimensional computer storage device they say could store the memory of a bulky Cray supercomputer in a device the size of a sugar cube.

Transforming the prototype into a practical device that could be used in a computer system is years away, the researchers warn, but they say the device has the potential to take information retrieval and computer storage to unprecedented levels.

Peter Rentzepis, professor of chemistry at UCI, and Sadik Esener, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UCSD, said Monday that their working model of a 3-D “memory cube” has many technical hurdles to overcome, but it could eventually revolutionize computing.

“This has the potential to increase computer storage by several million times over,” Rentzepis said. “It is inexpensive, easy to construct and of very small volume and weight.”

The recording and erasing speeds of the memory cube could be in the billionths or trillionths of a second, far faster than current memory systems for supercomputers. The cube could store about 1 trillion pieces of data.

In concept, the device is simple. While magnetic disks traditionally store data in two dimensions, the 3-D memory has a much greater capacity because it can store data in three dimensions, Rentzepis said.

The memory cube contains light-sensitive material in a three-dimensional space. Two lasers, placed at 90-degree angles to each other, can be moved to any point in the cube much like optical readers on a compact disc machine.

At each point where the laser pulses intersect, the computer could store a piece of data. The laser pulse could record, or write, this data by changing the light-sensitive material so it emits a red color that can be interpreted as either a one or a zero, the basic storage language of digital computers.

Rentzepis said he will present the results of his four-year research effort at a meeting of the Materials Research Society at the Marriott hotel in Irvine today.

The device could be used first in supercomputers that require high-speed access of millions of pieces of data simultaneously, Rentzepis said. But first, Rentzepis said the lasers and material must be able to repetitively perform the retrieval tasks flawlessly.