News Researchers demonstrate liquid metal RAM, bringing us closer to flexible, implantable hardware – and to our Terminator 2 nightmares

[Admin]

Researchers from Tsinghua University in China have successfully introduced a fully-flexible liquid RAM, dubbed "FlexRAM". The future possibilities this raises include massive improvements in wearables, implants, and robotics.

Researchers demonstrate liquid metal RAM, bringing us closer to flexible, implantable hardware – and to our Terminator 2 nightmares : Read more

 

[ThomasKinsley]

Cue the countless topics here of, "My LPDDR7X2 liquid RAM dried up! What reconstitutes it?" and "Help! My RAM leaked all over the floor and destroyed my aluminum chair! What do I do?"

 

[husker]

I'd hazard a guess that one of the least important barriers to achieve "soft intelligent robots, brain-machine interface systems, and wearable/implantable electronic devices", is whether the RAM is liquid or solid. Liquid RAM will still have to be contained in something, and that 'something' will be a solid. Even if liquid memory were contained in a tiny balloon for maximum flexibility, it makes more sense to develop memory in the form of a thin and flexible solid and dispense of the liquid all together.

 

[JamesJones44]

I hate to sound like a pessimist, but people have been claiming the liquid metal revolution is just around the corner for at least two decades. It'll get cracked someday, but I'm skeptical that this is it based on what I'm reading and seen over the past 2 decades.

 

[vanadiel007]

Article does not even explain how it works, how to make it change state, how to interface with it etc...

This sounds a lot like the article from another Chinese laboratory that managed to make a LK-99 super conductor in the kitchen sink. Still waiting on independent testing and confirmation...

 

[gg83]

Mare it white and it can be like vex milk from the Destiny franchise.

 

[evdjj3j]

Article does not even explain how it works, how to make it change state, how to interface with it etc...

This sounds a lot like the article from another Chinese laboratory that managed to make a LK-99 super conductor in the kitchen sink. Still waiting on independent testing and confirmation...

Welcome to Tomshardware 2024.

 

[rluker5]

People used to use ferrite beads woven in copper cloth for ram. It was in a rigid frame but one easily could have put inside of some flexible insulative plastic. It is likely somebody did that and beat this stuff to the first flexible ram title by about 50 years. Some guys used to sell it on eBay. Like $15 for 512 bytes.

Not very practical, but unless they try to copy optane, neither is this.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

Article does not even explain how it works, how to make it change state, how to interface with it etc...

This sounds a lot like the article from another Chinese laboratory that managed to make a LK-99 super conductor in the kitchen sink. Still waiting on independent testing and confirmation...

Here are the actual articals from a reputable journal and research article. One is from IEEE and the other from Advanced Materials.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/flexible-electronics-flexram

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202309182

With regards to the LK-99 fiasco, all the Chinese laboratories reported on LK-99 was possible synthesis of the material based on the incomplete formula from Korean researchers, with no claim that it was actually superconducting. In fact, the Chinese labs (as well as international researchers) ultimately failed to produce superconductive materials and reported it as so. It was lots of speculation & social media posts, all of which aren't sources to be taken seriously. People need to stop mistaking the Chinese version twitter and facebook and twitter and facebook themselves for scientific consensus.

 

[vanadiel007]

Here are the actual articals from a reputable journal and research article. One is from IEEE and the other from Advanced Materials.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/flexible-electronics-flexram

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202309182

With regards to the LK-99 fiasco, all the Chinese laboratories reported on LK-99 was possible synthesis of the material based on the incomplete formula from Korean researchers, with no claim that it was actually superconducting. In fact, the Chinese labs (as well as international researchers) ultimately failed to produce superconductive materials and reported it as so. It was lots of speculation & social media posts, all of which aren't sources to be taken seriously. People need to stop mistaking the Chinese version twitter and facebook and twitter and facebook themselves for scientific consensus.

So, it's based on resistance changes. I think it's a lot of research time wasted as I don't see any practical uses of this.
It seems like Chinese labs every so often make the headlines with some new invention, only to never be heard from again.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

So, it's based on resistance changes. I think it's a lot of research time wasted as I don't see any practical uses of this.
It seems like Chinese labs every so often make the headlines with some new invention, only to never be heard from again.

Labs from every country do this, its not exclusive to Chinese ones. People like to just crap on Chinese labs for the wrong reasons. A more sensible reason to dislike Chinese labs is their low quality article mills. Publishing something that's actually decent science in an established journal , then not following up on it isn't something terrible or unique to Chinese labs.