Posted on 07/17/2012 10:06:31 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Memory maker Micron has become the first firm to put Phase Change Memory (PCM) - one of the possible non-volatile successors to Flash - into mass production. Caveat: we're talking the technology's use for mobile devices only.
Micron is pitching its initial offering at mobile devices, combining 1Gb of 45nm PCM and 512Mb of low-power DDR 2 memory into a single, 1.8V chip, though both types of memory are implemented on separate dies. Cramming memory and storage into a single chip will appeal to mobile device developers who generally favour a high level of integration, the better to get more into small, phone-size cases.
PCM uses heat generated by an electrical current to flip a material between separate physical states. Each of these phases has distinct properties that can be sampled, typically by measuring its electrical resistance, allowing each cell to represent one or more bits.
Unlike Flash, PCM cells are erased at the bit level, not in entire blocks, so the writing process is much faster than that of Flash chips. PCM's write latency is typically 1µs - two orders of magnitude less than Flash.
Read latency, says Micron, is in the 50-100ns range - slower than Ram, but considerably faster than Flash's 10-25µs (10,000-25,000ns).
PCM cells are more resistant to high-energy radiation, making it suitable for space applications for which radiation-sensitive Flash is inappropriate.
Like Flash, PCM has limited longevity, but the technology's proponents claim it operates over many more millions of write cycles than Flash.
Micron said its PCM delivers a random read performance of "up to 400MB/s" and an endurance of "more than 100,000 write cycles". Those stats aren't significantly beyond modern Flash specs, but then these are very early days for commercial PCM. ®
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/johnny
We've been looking for the perfect battery, perhaps it's found repurposing our approach to memory to use for energy to create a solid state battery, a sort of flash memory battery.
Might work for storing solar energy.
Any clues as to how to make this into a battery?
The answer's there waiting for the right person/people to uncover it.
Kewl
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[without trying to appear Too snarky], energy storage and data storage are not the same type of thing. More like apples v. aardvarks.
Electronic data is energy stored.
But under opposite goals - you're confusing information density with energy density.
Electronic data storage uses the least possible amount of energy to store the most possible amount of information in the smallest space.
Battery storage, while willing to go complex if necessary, is trying to store the most amount of energy in the smallest space.
So there are literally opposite energy storage engineering schemes at play.
Unless... you could create gate switches in the actual stored energy, or (more likely) in the electromagnetic energy fields generated by the stored energy itself. In which case the energy density of a battery would also be information density, which would be majorly slick.
But the opposite isn't true, because energy density approaches minimal in purely information storage, because of the heat and durability issues that affect semiconductors.
Maybe you’re right. Just a thought I can’t quite explain or let go of. It’s like trying to remember a name to go with a face. Something familiar about the answer but I can’t quite get to it. Senility at an early age, I guess.
thanks for the post - tweeted the article
This is definitely in its infancy, very far off from commercial production. That's 1 Gb (lower case b, for bit) storage. It would take 128 chips just to make the 16 GB flash in the average mobile device these days. A phone has at least 512 MB RAM too, which is 8 of these chips. Maybe it could be useful as a sort of buffer cache due to its speed, but then may as well just add more RAM to do that.
are you on FB? IT question at the FR HAvener thread.
WHO IN THIS GROUP IS SKILLED AT DOT-NET (C# and/or VB.NET) AND BROWSER ADD ONS? I have a project.
I have no clue
Also, I do not know C# or any other .NET tech.
If you think it's worthy of a thread, start one and ping me to it.
This is definitely in its infancy, very far off from commercial production.
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