4 ms·

Not really, a bit further on in the article the founder mentions how they spent most of their time on the tooling to make it compatible with existing manufactur

Not really, a bit further on in the article the founder mentions how they spent most of their time on the tooling to make it compatible with existing manufacturing methods. It should be cheaper than DRAM and slightly more than NAND.

adventured 11y ago
That's impossible today. Are you telling me they're going to be manufacturing millions of units of carbon nanotube RAM at $50 for 8gb in the next five years? The product they're looking to sell is extremely small amounts of NRAM, at extremely high prices vs DRAM. What you're not going to see is $0.01 per mb of NRAM in the near future.
- ghshephard 11y ago
  I can't tell whether you think millions of units is an insignificantly small amount of volume, and as a result the pricing for carbon nanotube RAM won't come down in price. I would think they are targeting units in the hundreds of millions, if not billions of units over the next five years to get to scale. The the lower power opportunity makes it an obvious choice for mobile devices (watches, tablets, phones) if the technology proves out.
  - LastMuel 11y ago
    Precisely, the article also states that they aren't aiming to manufacture, but to license the technology. It sounds like they want to get this out in the marketplace. If we see two to three manufactures that can bring tooling up, and if they don't collude on price, I would think the consumer costs should come down due to the competition.
  - adventured 11y ago
    I believe the likelihood that we're going to see $50 / 8gb type prices from carbon nanotube RAM in the next five years, on the shelf at Best Buy, is zero. I don't believe they're (the companies that license it) going to be able to manufacture millions of high capacity units (multi-gb) at competitive cost, because they're not going to be able to produce it cheaply any time soon. This is just another in a very long list of proclaimed traditional RAM killers that has been touted, only to come up empty on price or performance. In this case, it's going to be price and capacity. In my opinion this product will turn out to be far more difficult to manufacture at volume than what they're admitting. Five years from now, you still won't be able to buy it at scale for a competitive price. For them to enable the manufacturing of billions of units of a carbon nanotube product, would practically make them wizards of chemistry. Nowhere on earth are carbon nanotubes being manufactured like that, and there's a good reason for why that is.
    - ghshephard 11y ago
      The first target market for this type of memory won't be best-buy retail units, but instead embedded in low-power/small battery devices. Smart Phones are where I'd expect these to first make an appearance - so 10s of millions of units over the next five years is a pretty inconsequential target, particularly if they are just licensing their IP.
- obsurveyor 11y ago
  They're not making or selling anything. They're only licensing the technology.

adventured 11y ago

That's impossible today. Are you telling me they're going to be manufacturing millions of units of carbon nanotube RAM at $50 for 8gb in the next five years? The product they're looking to sell is extremely small amounts of NRAM, at extremely high prices vs DRAM. What you're not going to see is $0.01 per mb of NRAM in the near future.

ghshephard 11y ago
I can't tell whether you think millions of units is an insignificantly small amount of volume, and as a result the pricing for carbon nanotube RAM won't come down in price. I would think they are targeting units in the hundreds of millions, if not billions of units over the next five years to get to scale. The the lower power opportunity makes it an obvious choice for mobile devices (watches, tablets, phones) if the technology proves out.
- LastMuel 11y ago
  Precisely, the article also states that they aren't aiming to manufacture, but to license the technology. It sounds like they want to get this out in the marketplace. If we see two to three manufactures that can bring tooling up, and if they don't collude on price, I would think the consumer costs should come down due to the competition.
- adventured 11y ago
  I believe the likelihood that we're going to see $50 / 8gb type prices from carbon nanotube RAM in the next five years, on the shelf at Best Buy, is zero. I don't believe they're (the companies that license it) going to be able to manufacture millions of high capacity units (multi-gb) at competitive cost, because they're not going to be able to produce it cheaply any time soon. This is just another in a very long list of proclaimed traditional RAM killers that has been touted, only to come up empty on price or performance. In this case, it's going to be price and capacity. In my opinion this product will turn out to be far more difficult to manufacture at volume than what they're admitting. Five years from now, you still won't be able to buy it at scale for a competitive price. For them to enable the manufacturing of billions of units of a carbon nanotube product, would practically make them wizards of chemistry. Nowhere on earth are carbon nanotubes being manufactured like that, and there's a good reason for why that is.
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    The first target market for this type of memory won't be best-buy retail units, but instead embedded in low-power/small battery devices. Smart Phones are where I'd expect these to first make an appearance - so 10s of millions of units over the next five years is a pretty inconsequential target, particularly if they are just licensing their IP.
obsurveyor 11y ago
They're not making or selling anything. They're only licensing the technology.