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Does the word ReRAM ring a bell? No? Well, the key point is that it's much faster than NAND memory, and it's making its way into chips from Elpida, Sharp and Panasonic. Further proof that ReRAM is on the up and up? Researchers at University College London have used this technology to make a chip that operates at 100 times the speed of standard Flash memory. The device is composed completely of silicon oxide, which improves the chip's resistance, and it doesn't require a vacuum to work (which makes it cheaper to produce). But this new chip is more than just a faster alternative to Flash; its ability to move between different states of conductivity means it can be configured as a memristor, or a device that handles both data-processing and storage tasks. In the long term, researchers hope this technology can pave the way for silicon oxide CPUs -- and UCL is already using this design to help develop transparent memory chips for mobile devices. Need to know more? Feast your heart on the gritty details via the link below.Researchers develop silicon ReRAM chip, send warning shot to Flash memory originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 06:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink Phys.org  |   | Email this | Comments

The latest Firefox beta contains a feature that has been on the Mozilla support team’s to-do list for, well, “forever.” The “Reset Firefox” option is intended to help users avoid troubleshooting headaches and will be particularly handy when nothing else seems to work. What’s more, you can reset the browser without sacrificing your personal data with this one-click option. Hit the jump to find out how. According to Mozilla’s Michael Verdi, the realization that not everybody possesses the time and expertise necessary “to identify the exact cause of the problem and just fix that” is what  prompted the non-profit to develop this feature. “So the support team worked with product and engineering to create the Reset Firefox feature,” he wrote in a recent blog post. “The first implementation of this is a button on the Troubleshooting Information page (about:support). What is [sic] does is create a new profile and migrate your bookmarks, passwords, cookies and form data. Everything else gets set to the defaults.” However, please note that at the moment this feature only works with the default profile, and saves nothing else except the bookmarks, passwords, cookies and form data associated with that profile. If you’re using a Nightly or an Aurora build of Firefox, the reset feature may not work for you. Firefox 13 will graduate to the stable channel on June 5, 2012, as per Mozilla's (rapid) release schedule.

As much as we're familiar with mobile device torture tests, they're normally inflicted by us or otherwise not-so-voluntary. Nokia, however, has stepped up to the plate and doled out the abuse to the Lumia 900 itself with a hammer and nail, all based on a wager that the Windows Phone's use of Gorilla Glass would hold up to Sonim-level punishment. The company's Chris Ruble and Mike Meyers (not that Mike Myers) used a Lumia 710 as a dry run before an on-camera demo that not only saw the 900 assaulted with the hammer, but used as a blunt instrument itself -- all without a crack or scratch. We imagine that other toughened-glass phones would survive the hit, and there's every possibility that smacking the polycarbonate plastic would leave more than a scuff mark. Nokia's test still proves that its pride and joy can withstand more than just a casual roughing up, and you can see the slightly cringe-inducing test in the video below.Continue reading Nokia uses Lumia 900 as a hammer in a torture test, makes us wince (video)Nokia uses Lumia 900 as a hammer in a torture test, makes us wince (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 04:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink WMPoweruser  |  Nokia Conversations  | Email this | Comments

Excited for Nintendo's new tablet-esque controller? So are the kids in TT Games' QA department. An over-excited tester tweeted out an image of a slightly different Wii U slab than the one we laid hands on at E3 2011, teasing "look we what we have at work!" Answering the call does indeed reveal something worth looking at -- a somewhat wider looking Wii U slate featuring two full-sized analog sticks (as opposed to 3DS-like circle pads), a pair of unmarked button-like squares, and a new starboard home for the controller's plus and minus buttons. The tweet was summarily pulled, of course, but not before our friends at Joystiq nabbed a screenshot. Naturally, the rumor mill started right up, churning out speculation of developer specific slabs, early prototypes and late redesigns. The truth? We'll probably need to wait until E3 to find out, but we reached out to Nintendo for a comment all the same. We'll let you know if we hear anything more than the usual "Nintendo doesn't comment on rumors and speculation" line.Alternative Wii U controller design makes brief appearance on Twitter, goes into hiding originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 02:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink Joystiq  |  Twitter  | Email this | Comments

Cooler Master has spread its wings into a lot of different product lines, but it's still best known for its namesake: stuff that keeps your PC running cool. To that effect, today the company announced an update to the design of its Hyper 412 Slim CPU cooler as well as three new thermal pastes. The Hyper 412 Slim redesign introduces a pair of appropriately slim fans on either side of the heatsink. Why slim fans, you ask? Cooler Master says the new look will increase cooling performance while still allowing you to plop memory down around the cooler. The Hyper 412 Slim works best with LGA 2011 sockets and should be available next month for around $50. Check out more about the Hyper 412 Slim on the Cooler Master website. Of course, you need thermal paste to install a CPU cooler, so Cooler Master announced three new compounds to go with the redesigned Hyper 412 Slim: the gold-colored, IC Essential E1, the grey-colored IC Essential E2, and the white-colored IC Value V1, which offer varying levels of conductivity. All three will join the new-look Hyper 412 Slim on store shelves in June.

Intel's doing a bang-up job and shrinking transistors and packing them in tighter than ever before, but let's face it: it's going to be hard to scale silicon down much further. That eventual wall is why engineers are pumped about the potential of graphene, a substance with more than 200 times the electron mobility of silicon. (Read: better potential performance.) Coaxing graphene transistors into switching off current to create the 1 and 0 signals we know and love has been tricky, however. Now Samsung says it's developed a solution that does just that, without limiting graphene's electron mobility. That last part is key: most of the previous solutions to graphene's electric current woes involved transforming the material into a semi-conductor, but doing so reduced its electron mobility -- thereby eliminating much of its performance gain over silicon. Samsung Electronics' R&D arm, the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, created a special three-terminal Schottky barrier (dubbed the "Barristor" by Samsung) that can be raised or lowered in order to allow or impede the flow of electrical. The three-terminal device is basically a gate. So how does Barristor stop current without mucking up electron mobility? From the abstract: The key is an atomically sharp interface between graphene and hydrogenated silicon. Large modulation on the device current (on/off ratio of 10^5) is achieved by adjusting the gate voltage to control the graphene-silicon Schottky barrier. Subscribers to the Science journal can check out the full text for an even more in-depth and jargon-filled explanation. It was published on the website yesterday. Follow Brad on Google+ or Twitter