New battery-style memory offers 100 times greater precision for smart hardware

Future electronics could be more energy-efficient than today’s. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have unveiled a new computer memory technology that breaks away from standard binary computing. The new technology is dubbed ETCRAM, which is short for electro-thermo-chemical random-access memory. It could help cut energy use across the tech industry. ETCRAM uses localized heating and electrical pulses within tantalum and vanadium oxide materials to store a continuous range of analog values. “ETCRAM is able to achieve 100 times higher precision than existing state-of-the-art technology — and at least three orders of magnitude greater dynamic range. That’s the value of a number that you can store in analog,” said Elliot Fuller, Sandia researcher. Electrothermochemical random access memory chips are able to achieve 100 times higher precision than existing state-of-the-art technology. (Photo by Arianna Andreatta) Moving beyond 1s and 0s Since the dawn of the digital age, silicon chips have processed information strictly as ones and zeros. Turn the switch on, you get a one. Flip it off, you get a zero. While this binary framework was built for the modern world, it wastes massive amounts of power by forcing complex calculations through two-state pipelines. ETCRAM throws out those constraints. Rather than choosing between on or off, the new memory technology stores a continuous range of analog values. The team says it is like a rechargeable battery “You can think of ETCRAM as a memory device. You can charge a battery halfway and then stop charging and use that energy. Think of the state of the battery as a memory. It stores that state,” researcher Alec Talin explained. ETCRAM works similarly, using localized heat and electrical pulses to trap distinct physical states inside materials like tantalum and vanadium oxide. “The technology that we’ve developed is designed to overcome a limitation of our existing computing technology to really improve energy efficiency,” added Fuller. The performance gains were huge. Fuller notes that ETCRAM delivers 100 times higher precision and at least three orders of magnitude greater dynamic range than existing analog memory devices. The key was a physics trick: self-heating. Electrochemistry is typically slow. But by triggering micro-bursts of heat right as the electrical pulse hits, the device speeds up, locking in precise analog values without pulling massive amounts of power. Smart sensors, lower power The energy reduction could not come at a better time. With artificial intelligence expanding rapidly, data centers are consuming power at alarming rates. Federal estimates project that server electricity consumption in the US could skyrocket to roughly 800 billion kilowatt-hours annually by 2050. Replacing power-hungry silicon memory with analog components like ETCRAM could bend that demand curve downward. This development is especially important for edge computing, as it lets hardware like camera sensors perform complex data analysis directly on the device, reducing both energy use and data-transmission delays. In edge computing, the data is processed right where it is collected instead of sending it back to distant cloud servers. Imagine a smart security camera analyzing video in real time on its own internal sensor, or an autonomous vehicle making split-second decisions without lag. With this development, the future of computing might be analog, self-heating, and surprisingly efficient. Get the latest in engineering, tech, space & science - delivered daily to your inbox.Mrigakshi is a science journalist who enjoys writing about space exploration, biology, and technological innovations. Her work has been featured in well-known publications including Nature India, Supercluster, The Weather Channel and Astronomy magazine. If you have pitches in mind, please do not hesitate to email her.