Competing technologies

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.

Via EETimes

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).

Via Engadget

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.

Via TechOn

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.

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 says that they will not develop flash products as it "doesn't pay".

Seagate CEO Bill Watkins said - "We're putting in a lot of money into what we think will be the next technology after MLC - that 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 but a lot of us are looking at different technologies at chip level," he added.

Via Silicon.com

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.