考研英語閱讀材料匯編之科技類(3)

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閱讀是考研英語的重要題型之一，也是保障英語成績的關(guān)鍵題目。因此，考研學(xué)子們要充分重視英語閱讀，除了平時多多閱讀英語雜志、報紙外，還需要針對閱讀進行專項訓(xùn)練。小編整理了關(guān)于考研英語閱讀題源的系列文章——考研英語閱讀材料匯編之科技類(3)，請參考!

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Moreover, although IBM has withdrawn from the memory chip business, the company said it was intensely interested in the technology for corporate computing applications like transaction processing.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.

詞匯注解

重點單詞

promising /'pr?misi?/

【文中釋義】adj.有希望的

【大綱全義】 adj有希望的，有前途的

chip /t?ip/

【文中釋義】n.薄片，芯片

【大綱全義】n.切屑，碎片;(土豆等的)薄片;集成電路塊

appetite /'æpitait/

【文中釋義】n.欲望

【大綱全義】n.食欲，胃口;欲望，性欲;愛好，趣味

video /'vidi?u/

【文中釋義】n.錄像(機)

【大綱全義】n.電視，視須;錄像(機)adj電視的，視須的;錄像的、制作……的錄像

manufacture /,mænju'fækt??/

【文中釋義】n.制造業(yè)

【大綱全義】 v.(大量)制造，加工 n.(大量)制造，制造業(yè);產(chǎn)品，制造業(yè)

semiconductor /'semik?n'd?kt?/

【文中釋義】n.半導(dǎo)體

【大綱全義】n.半導(dǎo)體

optical /'?ptik?l/

【文中釋義】adj.視覺的

【大綱全義】adj.眼的，視力的;光學(xué)的，視覺的

alloy /'æl?i/

【文中釋義】n.合金

【大綱全義】n.合金 v.將......鑄成合金

prototype/'pr?ut?taip/

【文中釋義】n.原型

【大綱全義】n.原型;典型，范例

intensely / in'tensli/

【文中釋義】adj.強烈的

【大綱全義】adj.強烈的，劇烈的

variety /v?'rai?ti/

【文中釋義】n.多樣

【大綱全義】n.種種，多種多樣;種類，品種

routinely/ru:'ti:nli/

【文中釋義】adv.通常

【大綱全義】 adv.常規(guī)的，例行的

超綱單詞

entrant n.參賽者一卜 megabit n.兆位

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

gadget n.小機件 nonvolatile adj.永久的

amorphous adj.非晶體的 germanium n.鍺

重點段落譯文

IBM及其兩個合作公司的科學(xué)家們研制出了一種很有前景的材料，他們相信這種材將會開發(fā)出一種新的計算機存儲芯片—能夠滿足人們對存儲數(shù)碼音樂、圖片以及視頻日益增長的需求。

IBM公司以及其他兩個計算機存儲芯片制造商(奇夢達和旺宏電子)的研究人員，將會在周一于舊金山舉行的國際電子器件會議上以科技論文的形式展示這項先進的技術(shù)?？茖W(xué)家們已經(jīng)設(shè)計出一種新的半導(dǎo)體合金，它是從現(xiàn)在經(jīng)常使用的如CD、DVD的可視存儲設(shè)備的基礎(chǔ)上演化出來的。

這個科研組并不是唯一一個在這一領(lǐng)域?qū)ふ议W存器替代品的科研組，閃速存儲器是永久存儲的一個主要形式，之所以被稱為閃速存儲器是因為它可以在斷電的情況下保存信息。Intel和斯沃琪微型電力這兩家公司已經(jīng)建立了合作伙伴關(guān)系致力研發(fā)這一技術(shù)，另外，三星公司也在這一領(lǐng)域有所涉足。

Intel公司已經(jīng)展出了內(nèi)存為128兆的芯片并計劃在2007年推出相關(guān)產(chǎn)品。三星公司也公布他們預(yù)期在2008年在市場上投放內(nèi)存為512兆的芯片。

IBM公司的科學(xué)家們表明，他們發(fā)布的這一信息有著重大的意義，因為比起這一行業(yè)的其他公司目前生產(chǎn)的內(nèi)存條所用的合金材料來，他們的這一新型材料已展現(xiàn)出其優(yōu)勢。

如果這種技術(shù)被證明生產(chǎn)成本不高，適合投產(chǎn)，那么在有著186億美元產(chǎn)值的市場上將會成為廉價的可消除記憶芯片的一個新的競爭對手。最近幾年，這種可消除記憶的芯片已經(jīng)廣泛應(yīng)用于手機、音樂播放器以及其他的消費機件上。

而且，盡管IBM公司已經(jīng)從儲存芯片這一行業(yè)中撤出，但公司已表明其對這一技術(shù)在計算機方面的廣泛應(yīng)用有著濃厚的興趣，比如事務(wù)處理方面。更快的永久性存儲器將改變IBM公司生產(chǎn)的微型處理器的設(shè)汁，從而加快各類基礎(chǔ)操作。

IBM公司阿爾馬登研究中心的高層經(jīng)理斯派克·納拉洋說，該公司很有可能把這項新的存儲技術(shù)應(yīng)用到新一代超能計算機的微型處理器中。

經(jīng)過2年半的反復(fù)試驗，科學(xué)家們探索出一系列的材料，從非晶體狀態(tài)到晶體狀態(tài)，然后通過反復(fù)的加熱又可以回到原來的狀態(tài)的一系列材料。這種被稱之為GST的化合物是介于鍺、銻、啼之間的可轉(zhuǎn)換材料，現(xiàn)在通常被用來制作廉價的可視光盤，這些光盤使用激光束來進行讀寫。

以IBM公司為首的科研小組證明，用一組微小的電用一組微小的電流也能實現(xiàn)同樣的效果。這使得制造以電流而非光源的方式在零秒到一秒之間存儲數(shù)據(jù)的微型存儲器成為可能。IBM公司的科學(xué)家們說，這種新的材料是由鍺和銻的合組成的，并且它經(jīng)常被當(dāng)作GS提及。

希望各位考生能夠每天堅持閱讀，提高詞匯量和語感能力，為以后的系統(tǒng)復(fù)習(xí)打下堅實的基礎(chǔ)。最后提醒大家，夏季來臨，復(fù)習(xí)備考需注意防暑降溫。預(yù)?？佳谐晒?

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