The Professor Memory Blog
The Professor Memory blog covers critical new applications and the resulting shift in the value proposition of memory technologies. The professor identifies competitive advantages of the widening range of memory technologies, and forecasts potential market entry points that will be enabled by changes in market dynamics.
MRAM Moves to Higher Densities
Everspin introduced a 16-megabit MRAM product today focused on all applications requiring both SRAM performance and nonvolatile data storage. This latest product also addresses MRAM’s traditional high reliability and high-performance market segment, while advancing the technology to a higher density. The new MR4A16B is a 3.3-volt parallel I/O non-volatile memory product featuring 35ns acce ...... Read More
Comments (0)HP’s Memristor
PWe have been discussing forecasts of technology advances, and here is another critical forecast to add to the list. HP Labs has updated the status of its memristor technology in a paper published by HP’s Information and Quantum Systems Lab this week in the journal "Nature". Nearly all of the discussion about memristors so far has focused on their use for data storage; HP predicts that it c ...... Read More
Comments (5)Changing Market Conditions
In reponse to my recent post, First Quarter Evaluation, a reader commented on the status of a phase change program in 2004, and I thought that the response might have some general interest. I suspect that any reader who has been following these technologies for that long might also recall the presentation by two very large and well-known companies at the VLSI symposium in Kyoto in 2003 regarding ...... Read More
Comments (6)First Quarter Evaluation
Forecasts and commitments serve the purpose of providing measurements, and my 2010 predictions are not starting off very well. My predictions for the first half of the year were that Numonyx would have phase-change memory samples available in the first quarter, that Samsung would respond with a new round of phase-change memory samples in the second quarter, and that Adesto would have samples of an ...... Read More
Comments (6)The Impact of Lithography Challenges – Part 2
After first apologizing to Dr. Tredennick if I have somewhat mangled the points of his presentation—I completely agree with Dr. Tredennick assessment of the manufacturing challenges ahead. I also believe that this manufacturing issue has a double-barreled impact on the production costs of memory technologies. The first impact is relative to the ability to attain th ...... Read More
Comments (2)The Impact of Lithography Challenges – Part 1
I recently had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Nick Tredennick, and he shared some of the topics that he had included in his recent presentation titled The Last Convergence. His presentation defines three phases in the convergence of semiconductor-related technologies, with the first phase driven by companies like Digital that built modules from discrete components. During the second, integrated ci ...... Read More
Comments (1)Webcast: Phase Change Memory - New Technology to Change Memory Usage Models
In our previous webcasts, Numonyx has presented an overview of Phase Change Memory and discussed its unique reliability characteristics. Now, tune in to learn how PCM’s unique capabilities enable different system design approaches of existing memory usage models. The webcast will help viewers develop a deeper understanding of how memory system design can be enhanced, streamlined and simplif ...... Read More
Comments (4)The "Good Enough Moment"
Thank you for the comment/question regarding the impact of magnetic interference on STT-MRAM. As the commentor points out, a strong magnetic field pulse can impact magnetic random access memory cells. Since STT-MRAM writing is done by spin-transfer torque switching instead of with a magnetic field, STT-MRAM requires less shielding than conventional MRAM. The EU standard on maximum magnetic field s ...... Read More
Comments (4)The Next Battle
The New York Times posted an interesting article (For Chip Makers, the Next Battle Is in Smartphones) last week that follows the theme of my earlier blogs. According to the author, the "chip wars" are entering a new phase as manufacturers fight to supply the silicon for one of the fastest-growing segments of computing: smart phones, tiny laptops and tablet-style devices. The author concludes that ...... Read More
Comments (6)Market Entry Applications
In a recent Professor Memory post, a challenge was made to identify a single specific application for a particular new memory technology. Under the assumption that the future market will contain a decreased emphasis on the desktop PC product concept of the past, and an increased emphasis on mobile applications, below are several possibilities: PCM and Resistive Memory Technologies While system de ...... Read More
Comments (5)Makimoto’s Wave
In response to a question to name a specific application for a particular memory technology, I responded that the value proposition of any technology is related to the specific end application and that therefore the market scenario had to be first identified. One possible scenario is that nothing changes from today in which existing applications were designed with the specific cost/performance at ...... Read More
Comments (4)Micron Acquires Numonyx
This transfer of Numonyx to Micron is an excellent opportunity for all parties for several reasons. The support of STMicroelectronics and Intel was the best that could have possibly been provided to Numonyx’ PCM during the critical R/D phase. Deep pockets of funding combined with the technical depth of Intel and STMicro would be the ideal incubator for any emerging technology. It’s ...... Read More
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