Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zds-ux!gerry
From: gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Dram Capacitance (was Questions about DRAM's)
Message-ID: <263@zds-ux.UUCP>
Date: 9 Apr 90 16:17:44 GMT
References: <28686@cup.portal.com> <345@winston.megatek.uucp>
Reply-To: gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason)
Organization: Zenith Data Systems
Lines: 24

In article <345@winston.megatek.uucp> cjp@megatek.UUCP (Chris Pikus) writes:
>From article <28686@cup.portal.com>, by mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson):
 
>> Or, will SRAM's eventually surpass DRAM's in density?  I've heard this 
>> comparison:  how small can you make a capacitor / how small can you make
>> six transistors.  Will transistors eventually become so small that six
>> interconnected transistors together are smaller than a minimum-size
>> capacitor.  Or will the capacitors scale down as far as transistors
>> can go?

>	A physicist freind explained it to me once. He says that in 
>order to make a memory cell, you need capacitance. (Whether in a capa-
>citor or in the junction capacitance of a transistor.) A laymans 
. . . .

Not exactly, you need something that can hold an energy state or value.  20
years ago it was magnetic cores, now it's tiny capacitors.  Probably something
new and better will come along.  Maybe someone knows whether this technology
is close to commertial reality, a recent Popular Science had a small write-up
on "fero-electric" memory technology.  They said the cells could be smaller
than DRAM cells, and are non-volitile.  If it can be made, I'm sure there are
many applications for it.

Gerry Gleason