Earlier this week, NEC Electronics, along with Elpida Memory and Oki Electric announced their findings for squishing a massive amount of memory into a very small space, keeping Moore's Law — the observation that the number of transistors on a silicon chip doubles every two years — alive and well. They achieved greatest success by putting eight memory chips and a controller chip in a vertical stack, with 3D connections in between.

The key (listen closely now) is that the chips are linked together by thousands of tiny pins and high-density microbumps. (I could go on…) Equally as mind-blowing, each chip is just 50 micrometers thick. All of this adds up to an incredibly tiny and insanely powerful package. It's only a matter of time until we have the power of a laptop in something like a cell phone. — Elliot Black

NEC press release, via Far East Gizmos