Scientists at IBM and two partner companies have developed a material that could lead to a new kind of computer memory chip that is more than 500 times as fast as today’s flash chips and 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 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.