News

posted on 02 June 2008 09:30

According to Nikkei.net, Toshiba and some other DRAM manufacturers are about to create a 1Gbit MRAM chip which could replace current DRAM and flash memory.

DRAM needs constant power refreshes to keep its contents stable. Flash memory does not, being known as non-valatile RAM (NV-RAM) but is slower to access for reads and slower again for writes. MRAM - magneto-resistive memory - combines the fast access of DRAM with the non-volatility of flash. It is based on storing a magnetic charge, like a hard disk drive or tape, the polarity of which is detected by measuring the memory cell's electrical resistance which changes due to a magnetic tunnel effect.

MRAM has been developed since the nineties. It is very fast to access, both for reads and writes, and is typically used as a cache memory in modern CPU chips. Flash memory's capacity and speed improvements has prevented any candidate for replacing both flash and DRAM having really serious investment put behind it.

Hynix is developing Spin-Transfer Torque RAM (STT-RAM) whilst Numonyx is working on Phase Change Memory (PCM); two other tchnologies combining DRAM access-speed with flash non-volatility.
^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}