Digitimes reports that Macronix has signed an agreement with IBM to continue to co-develop phase-change memory (PCM) technology. The company said it is optimistic about the outlook for PCM, which is likely to be a successor to all memory products used in computers and consumer electronics devices.
Numonyx say that they are ready to start sending out samples for customers for their 1-Gbit Phase-Change memory chips in the first quarter of 2010. Volume production will start later in 2010.
Intel and Numonyx have announced a new memory technology that "paves the way for scalable, higher density phase change memory (PCM) products". They have created a 64Mb chip that enables to stack multiple layers of PCM arrays in a single die. They cal it PCMS (phase change memory and switch).
Samsung Electronics announced today that it has begun production of 512Mb Phase-Change Memory (PRAM). It is targeted for mobile devices. It features high-performance and low power. Samsung says that a handset with PRAM can extend its lifetime over 20%.
The 512Mb PRAM can erase 64KWs (kilowords) in 80ms, said to be over 10 times faster than NOR Flash memory. In data segments of 5MBs, PRAM can erase and rewrite data approximately seven times faster than NOR Flash.
Startup 4DS has emerged from stealth mode and claims to have made a major breakthrough in resistive random access memory (RRAM) technology. They also announced a new round of funding, and they are looking for a manufacturing partner to bring it's "4DS memory" into mass production.
RRAMs have been the subject of academic research since the discovery of the electrical pulse induced resistance change effect in such films around 2000.
RRAM cells are usually two-terminal devices based on perovskite-oxide thin film materials. Resistive switching memories are based on materials whose resistivity can be electrically switched between high and low conductive states. RRAM is becoming of interest for future scaled memories, because of their intrinsic scaling characteristics compared to the charge-based flash devices, and potentially small cell size, enabling dense crossbar RRAM arrays using vertical diode selecting elements.
4DS' RRAM is a high-capacity, non-volatile memory with fast switching speeds measured below 5-ns, and with an endurance of 1 billion write/read cycles. Compared to flash memory, RRAM requires lower voltages and lower currents, enabling its use in low power applications, he said.
RRAM exhibits lower programming currents than phase-change memory or PRAM, the company said. Compared to MRAM, RRAM has a simpler, smaller cell structure. MRAM has a 16F2 structure, while 4DS makes use of a 4F2 technology.
Seagate's CEO talks again about MRAM (last month he said they are putting a lot of money into next-gen memory tech, including MRAM). He says that MRAM will be a competitor for DRAM and not H/D.
Via VentureBeat
Seagate's CEO, Bill Watkins, said that the company is investing "a lot of money" into what the company thinks will be the next-generation memory technology after MLC.
Bill says that the technology "would be something like a spin around magnetic RAM, it could be a phase shift type of process. I won't go into [details] because it's kind of proprietary". The company is looking at several technology, and says it will not develop flash products as it "doesn't pay".
Flash and DRAM manufacturers Hynix and Numonyx will jointly develop NAND flash and mobile phone DRAM product over a 5-year term.
The two suppliers have signed an agreement to expand their existing program with stated aims being:
Elpida and Qimonda are discussing joint development of Phase-change RAM (PRAM) and also magneto-resistive RAM (MRAM) together with other potential technologies such as Si through-hole electrode technology. The two DRAM-making companies are talking about a merger.
In two papers published in the April 11 issue of Science, IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin and colleagues at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose describe both the fundamentals of a technology dubbed "racetrack" memory as well as a milestone in that technology. This milestone could lead to electronic devices capable of storing far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today, with lightning-fast boot times, far lower cost and unprecedented stability and durability.
Within the next ten years, racetrack memory, so named because the data "races" around the wire "track," could lead to solid state electronic devices - with no moving parts, and therefore more durable - capable of holding far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today. For example, this technology could enable a handheld device such as an mp3 player to store around 500,000 songs or around 3,500 movies - 100 times more than is possible today - with far lower cost and power consumption. The devices would not only store vastly more information in the same space, but also require much less power and generate much less heat, and be practically unbreakable; the result: massive amounts of personal storage that could run on a single battery for weeks at a time and last for decades.
For nearly fifty years, scientists have explored the possibility of storing information in magnetic domain walls, which are the boundaries between magnetic regions or "domains" in magnetic materials. Until now, manipulating domain walls was expensive, complex, and used significant power to generate the fields necessary to do so. In the paper describing their milestone, "Current Controlled Magnetic Domain-Wall Nanowire Shift Register," Dr. Parkin and his team describe how this long-standing obstacle can be overcome by taking advantage of the interaction of spin polarized current with magnetization in the domain walls; this results in a spin transfer torque on the domain wall, causing it to move. The use of spin momentum transfer considerably simplifies the memory device since the current is passed directly across the domain wall without the need for any additional field generators.
