ABSTRACT
The electronics industry is composed of three major components: computing (logic and memory), data storage, and communications. One of the most important limitations of computing devices is the ever increasing power consumption required by higher processing speeds. One means of reducing the power needed is the development of multi-core processors. Such processors, however, demand much larger memories, so that the proportion of a silicon chip dedicated to memory will increase from typical values today of ~60–70% to perhaps 90% in a few years’ time [1]. The size and consequent cost of such chips could be significantly reduced by the development of a very high-density, high-performance memory, if this can done at a sufficiently low cost.
