In the era of artificial intelligence, where is the latest limit of storage speed? On the evening of April 16, Beijing time, the team of Zhou Peng and Liu Chunsen from Fudan University published their latest results in Nature. The "Daybreak (PoX)" picosecond flash memory device that the team spent 10 years developing has an erasing and writing speed of sub-1 nanosecond (400 picoseconds). It is the fastest semiconductor charge storage device currently mastered by mankind, which will redefine the boundaries of existing storage technology.
"In the equivalent of a blink of an eye, the super flash memory has worked 1 billion times, that is, in the time it took light to travel 12 centimeters, thousands of electrons have been stored," Zhou Peng said.
The transition of civilization is bound to produce massive amounts of data. From the knotting of ropes to record events in ancient times to today's advanced electronic storage technology, mankind's pursuit of information storage speed has never stopped.
Currently, the fastest memories are volatile memories. Although they are fast, data is lost when power is turned off, making them difficult to apply in low-power scenarios. In contrast, non-volatile memories represented by flash memory have the advantage of extremely low power consumption, but they cannot meet the extremely high-speed data access requirements of AI computing.
The solution lies in a key basic scientific issue: the limit of non-volatile access speed of information.
Since 2015, the teams of Zhou Peng and Liu Chunsen have been trying to use two-dimensional materials to make flash memory to improve its access speed. Today, ten years later, they have given an answer that goes beyond the limits with the "Dawn" picosecond flash memory device.
By breaking through the original theoretical framework, the team constructed a quasi-two-dimensional Gaussian model and theoretically predicted the charge super-injection phenomenon, which is the theoretical basis of the "Dawn" picosecond flash memory device. What's so special about hyperinjection? It breaks through the injection extreme point of traditional injection rules and achieves unlimited injection. "Take climbing stairs as an example. Traditional injections use feet to walk, and there is a speed limit due to the overall strength. However, super injections are like sitting on a rocket and flying upstairs. There is no limit, and the speed increases." Liu Chunsen explained.
As the most cost-effective and widely used memory, flash memory has always been the cornerstone of the technology layout of international technology giants. The "Daybreak" picosecond flash memory device developed by the team touches the limit of information storage speed and helps large AI models run extremely fast. The two-dimensional super-injection mechanism also increases the non-volatile storage speed to the theoretical limit. This high-speed non-volatile flash memory technology is expected to change the global storage technology landscape, promote industrial upgrading and create new application scenarios, and also provide strong support for my country to achieve technological leadership in related fields.