IBM’s development labs are claiming that they have created a static RAM cell half as small as anyone else’s experimental version and ten times smaller than today’s commercial technology.
Comprising six transistors, an SRAM cell is a fast type of memory which doesn’t need to be constantly refreshed as with conventional DRAM, but will hold a charge as a ‘bit’ so long as the power is on.
In order to shrink the cell down to the point where you can get 50,000 of them across the area of a human hair, IBM says it optimised the circuit layout and design of the cell. The company also used electron-beam and optical lithography to drive down the size.
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