考研阅读题源：Alloy Holds Out Promise of Speedier Memory Chip

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　　Alloy Holds Out Promise of Speedier Memory Chip

　　Scientists at IBM and two partner companies have developed a promising material that they believe will lead to a new kind of computer memory chip able to meet the growing appetite for storing digital music, pictures and video.

　　The advance will be described in a technical paper to be presented Monday at the International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco by researchers from IBM and two computer memory manufactures, Qimonda and Macronix. The scientists have designed a new semiconductor alloy derived from materials currently used in optical storage devices like CDs and DVDs.

　　This team is not the only entrant in the race to find alternatives to flash memory, the prevailing form of nonvolatile storage--so called because it can retain information without power. Intel and STMicroelectronics have formed a partnership to pursue the technology, and, separately, Samsung has made announcements in the field.

　　Intel has shown 128-megabit prototype chips and said it planned to introduce products in 2007. Samsung has described a 512-megabit prototype that it expects to market in 2008.

　　IBM scientists say their announcement is significant because the company's new material has performance advantages over alloys now in use in prototypes made by others in the industry

　　If the technology proves cheap enough to manufacture, it will create a new competitor in the $18.6 billion market for the inexpensive erasable memory chips that have proliferated in mobile phones, music players and other consumer gadgets in recent years.

　　Moreover, although IBM has withdrawn from the memory chip business, the company said it was intensely interested in the technology for corporate computing applications like transaction processing. Faster nonvolatile memory could change the design of the microprocessors that IBM makes, speeding up a variety of basic operations.

　　The new memory technology could potentially be added to a future generation of the IBM Power PC microprocessor, according to Spike Narayan, a senior manager at the company's Almaden Research Center here.

　　Over two and a half yeas, in a trial-and-error process, scientists here explored a class of materials that can be switched from an amorphous state to a crystalline one and then back again by repeated heating. The compounds, known as GST, or germanium-antimony-tellurium phase change materials, are routinely used today to make inexpensive optical disks that are read from and written to with laser beams.

　　The IBM led team has proved that the same effect can be realized by using a small electrical current. That has made it possible to build tiny memory cells that can store digital 1's and 0's by means of electricity rather than light. IBM scientists say the new material is an alloy composed of just germanium and antimony, and is referred to as GS. The scientists do not describe the material in detail in the paper.

　　The advantage of the new material, according to the scientists, is that it can be used to create switches more than 500 times as fast as today's flash chips. Moreover, the prototype switch developed by the scientists is just 3 nanometers high by 20 nanometers wide, offering the promise that the technology can be shrunk to smaller dimensions than could be attained by flash manufacturers.

　　The current generation of flash memory chips store as much as 32 billion bits on a chip .But that technology is likely to become increasingly problematic as chip makers struggle to reach ever finer dimensions.

　　Reached for comment later last week, Vivek Subramanian, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who has read the technical paper describing the project, said, "Everybody recognizes that scaling flash is going to be a problem in the long run. This looks like a really attractive technology that is both scaleable and consumes little power."

　　Industry executives said that the new materials might bolster the computer and consumer electronics industries just when it appeared they were nearing fundamental engineering limits.

　　"This is a Christmas present for the industry because it shatters so many things at once, "said Richard Doherty, president of Envisioneering, a computer industry consulting firm in Seaford, N.Y.，who has been briefed on the technical paper. "This could change the basic equation between processors, local storage and communications."

　　Today's flash memories are largely divided into two distinct types called NOR and NAND, with different performance characteristics. The principal disadvantage of the flash design is that data cannot be addressed one bit at a time but only in larger blocks of data.

　　In contrast, phase change memories will be addressable at the bit level. Such a capability means that the new memories will be more flexible than flash memory and can be used in a wider variety of applications and computer designs.

　　promising /'prɔmisiŋ/

　　【文中释义】adj.有希望的

　　【大纲全义】 adj有希望的，有前途的

　　chip /tʃip/

　　【文中释义】n.薄片，芯片

　　【大纲全义】n.切屑，碎片;(土豆等的)薄片;集成电路块

　　appetite /'æpitait/

　　【文中释义】n.欲望

　　【大纲全义】n.食欲，胃口;欲望，性欲;爱好，趣味

　　video /'vidiəu/

　　【文中释义】n.录像(机)

　　【大纲全义】n.电视，视须;录像(机)adj电视的，视须的;录像的、制作……的录像

　　manufacture /,mænju'fæktʃə/

　　【文中释义】n.制造业

　　【大纲全义】 v.(大量)制造，加工 n.(大量)制造，制造业;产品，制造业

　　semiconductor /'semikən'dɔktə/

　　【文中释义】n.半导体

　　【大纲全义】n.半导体

　　optical /'ɔptikəl/

　　【文中释义】adj.视觉的

　　【大纲全义】adj.眼的，视力的;光学的，视觉的

　　alloy /'ælɔi/

　　【文中释义】n.合金

　　【大纲全义】n.合金 v.将......铸成合金

　　prototype/'prəutətaip/

　　【文中释义】n.原型

　　【大纲全义】n.原型;典型，范例

　　intensely / in'tensli/

　　【文中释义】adj.强烈的

　　【大纲全义】adj.强烈的，剧烈的

　　variety /və'raiəti/

　　【文中释义】n.多样

　　【大纲全义】n.种种，多种多样;种类，品种

　　routinely/ru:'ti:nli/

　　【文中释义】adv.通常

　　【大纲全义】 adv.常规的，例行的

　　超纲单词

　　entrant n.参赛者一卜 megabit n.兆位

　　erasable adj.可消除的，可抹去的 proliferate v.扩散

　　gadget n.小机件 nonvolatile adj.永久的

　　amorphous adj.非晶体的 germanium n.锗

　　重点段落译文

　　IBM及其两个合作公司的科学家们研制出了一种很有前景的材料，他们相信这种材将会开发出一种新的计算机存储芯片—能够满足人们对存储数码音乐、图片以及视频日益增长的需求。

　　IBM公司以及其他两个计算机存储芯片制造商(奇梦达和旺宏电子)的研究人员，将会在周一于旧金山举行的国际电子器件会议上以科技论文的形式展示这项先进的技术。科学家们已经设计出一种新的半导体合金，它是从现在经常使用的如CD、DVD的可视存储设备的基础上演化出来的。

　　这个科研组并不是唯一一个在这一领域寻找闪存器替代品的科研组，闪速存储器是永久存储的一个主要形式，之所以被称为闪速存储器是因为它可以在断电的情况下保存信息。Intel和斯沃琪微型电力这两家公司已经建立了合作伙伴关系致力研发这一技术，另外，三星公司也在这一领域有所涉足。

　　Intel公司已经展出了内存为128兆的芯片并计划在2007年推出相关产品。三星公司也公布他们预期在2008年在市场上投放内存为512兆的芯片。

　　IBM公司的科学家们表明，他们发布的这一信息有着重大的意义，因为比起这一行业的其他公司目前生产的内存条所用的合金材料来，他们的这一新型材料已展现出其优势。

　　如果这种技术被证明生产成本不高，适合投产，那么在有着186亿美元产值的市场上将会成为廉价的可消除记忆芯片的一个新的竞争对手。最近几年，这种可消除记忆的芯片已经广泛应用于手机、音乐播放器以及其他的消费机件上。

　　而且，尽管IBM公司已经从储存芯片这一行业中撤出，但公司已表明其对这一技术在计算机方面的广泛应用有着浓厚的兴趣，比如事务处理方面。更快的永久性存储器将改变IBM公司生产的微型处理器的设汁，从而加快各类基础操作。

　　IBM公司阿尔马登研究中心的高层经理斯派克·纳拉洋说，该公司很有可能把这项新的存储技术应用到新一代超能计算机的微型处理器中。

　　经过2年半的反复试验，科学家们探索出一系列的材料，从非晶体状态到晶体状态，然后通过反复的加热又可以回到原来的状态的一系列材料。这种被称之为GST的化合物是介于锗、锑、啼之间的可转换材料，现在通常被用来制作廉价的可视光盘，这些光盘使用激光束来进行读写。

　　以IBM公司为首的科研小组证明，用一组微小的电用一组微小的电流也能实现同样的效果。这使得制造以电流而非光源的方式在零秒到一秒之间存储数据的微型存储器成为可能。IBM公司的科学家们说，这种新的材料是由锗和锑的合组成的，并且它经常被当作GS提及。

　　From The Economist

　　Aug. 2, 2007

　　以上就是跨考考研网为大家整理的考研英语阅读题源，2015年考研真题不一定从这些材料里出题，但是还是提醒大家平时多积累，练好基本功才能在2015年的考场上笑到最后。

　　2015年考研英语阅读技巧汇总(超详细)

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