Wired News has reported in recent days of the development of low-cost, low-power computer memory that could make a terabyte capacity thumb drive a reality.

Thanks to a new technique for manipulating charged copper particles at the molecular scale, researchers at Arizona State University say their memory is, bit-for-bit, one-tenth the cost of — and 1,000 times as energy-efficient as — flash memory, the predominant memory technology in iPhones and other mobile devices.

How different that would be — having basically 1,024 gigabytes, or a whopping 1,048,576 megabytes, in a tiny keyring size memory device — compared to say the entire memory of my first computer back in 1989, which came with a (then) “hefty” 20 megabytes of storage capacity (plus two floppy drives).

That’d mean my little usb key drive would be more than 52,400 times bigger than the hard disk on my first computer!

Michael Kozicki, director of Arizona State University’s Center for Applied Nanoionics, says:

the technology can be built from materials commonly used in the memory industry, which should help keep manufacturing costs down.

ASU predict the first product containing the memory, a simple chip, will be out in 18 months. I hope the product matches the “one-tenth” cost claim, along with being 1,000 times as energy efficient!