Competing technologies - Page 5

Seiko Epson Corp and Fujitsu have announced the results of their joint project to develop next-generation ferrorelectric random access memory (FRAM) technology. The joint development project was successfully completed recently and produced the anticipated results.

Through the project, the two companies developed technology for forming, processing and evaluating a new ferroelectric (PZT) film and created FRAM memory core process technology that is highly integrated (four times the level of conventional FRAM), features high performance (read/write speeds over three times faster than conventional FRAM) and offers a high degree of reliability (capable of more than 100 trillion read/write cycles). FRAM is currently attracting attention as a technology for secure memory, and this level of performance is claimed to be a world first. Since the ferroelectric process can be added to existing CMOS logic processes, it will be suitable for the development of mass production technologies.

IBM has announced a working prototype of a new type of memory called phase-change memory (PCM) that could replace both Flash and conventional RAM when it comes to market sometime in three- to five-year timespan. The company boasts that their PCM technology is 500 times faster than conventional NAND Flash, with a smaller cell size that uses half of the power.

IBM's TJ Watson Research Center developed the technology in conjunction with Macronix and Quimonda (the DRAM spin-off of Infineon), and the company has been cultivating it as one of a number of next-generation storage technologies like MRAM.

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ECD Ovonics' Ovonyx, Inc. joint venture licensees continue to make substantial progress toward commercialization. For example, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced prototypes of its next generation NOR flash, which is based on OUM technology, indicating that commercial products are expected to be available in 2008. Intel Corporation, as part of a joint venture with STMicroelectronics, also announced that it had produced prototypes of flash products based on OUM technology. 

IBM is pursuing research in three major areas. It seeks chip-based alternatives to drives with active programs in phase-change RAM and MRAM. It is pushing the frontiers in tape storage, which it expects will have a long life in archival systems. And it is developing software to bring more computing functions to storage arrays.

IBM researchers hope to find a semiconductor memory to replace flash and disks. It will need to have a small cell, low power budget, low cost, 100Mbps transfer rates, support for 1012 read/write cycles and a 10-year life cycle. They believe phase-change RAM holds the most promise.

Phase change memory, one of the ideas that's been bounced around the technology industry for over thirty years, got a big endorsement this week from IBM and Samsung.

One of the leading candidates to replace flash, magnetic RAM, looks good and Freescale Semiconductor has already come out with an MRAM device. Shrinking MRAM, however, is proving to be tough. The cell sizes are big too.

ECD Ovonics' Ovonyx, Inc. joint venture secured new licenses with major chip manufacturers globally to commercialize Ovonic Unified Memory (OUM) technology and one of its licensees, BAE, announced a product based on OUM technology. 

KDF today announced that Ovonyx, Inc., a Rochester Hills, Mich.-based company specializing in the commercialization of proprietary phase-change semiconductor memory technology, has purchased the new KDF Ci (cluster intelligence) cluster tool for use in support of commercialization programs for its technology. The product, which is expected to ship in the third quarter 2007, marks a first-time cluster tool win for KDF and the company’s entry into a new market.

Non-volatile phase-change memory boasts rapid write and erase speeds, elevated cycling endurance, and superior scaling performance as the industry moves toward newer generations of nonvolatile solid state memory. Ovonyx will continue its programs for Ovonyx Unified Memory (OUM) performance enhancement and cost reduction on KDF’s innovative cluster tool. The customized cluster tool with a hydrogen cleaning station will allow Ovonyx and its customers to develop manufacturing processes in a preproduction environment using a cluster tool that emulates their fab environments.  

Ramtron is offering what it believes is the industry’s first 8051-based microcontroller with integrated nonvolatile ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM).

The new VRS51L3074 is the first in a series of planned products leading to a microcontroller based entirely on FRAM, where FRAM will be used for program, data and register memory, eliminating the need for Flash and SRAM altogether, said Irv Lustigman, General Manager of Ramtron Canada.

Memory research managers themselves have scaled back their rhetoric in the past, avoiding the term universal memory altogether. After a period of exaggerated claims, companies became so quiet about any progress that analysts speculated efforts had been severely scaled back in ferroelectric (FRAM), magnetoresistive (MRAM) and phase-change (PRAM) development.

But managers at Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Intel Corp. and Texas Instruments insist that those programs are alive and kicking, even as they acknowledge that the road is long and uphill for any new memory type.

Intel Corp. sees current flash memory technology sustaining until the end of the decade, pushing out the need for "universal memory" until 2010, according to Greg Komoto, manager of strategic planning for Intel's flash memory group.
Speaking at a session at the Intel Developer Forum (March 8), Komoto said Intel continues to believe that ovonic unified memory (OUM), also known as phase-change memory, is the most promising nonvolatile memory alternative, more so than magnetic RAM (MRAM) or ferro-electric RAM (FeRAM), which are also being studied as potential replacements.
Komoto said OUM shows the most promise based on its scaling path, declining cost basis and the fact that it is bit-alterable.

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