Everspin Samples First STT MRAM

Everspin today announced that select customers have been sampled the world’s first “ST-RAM” a 64Mb chip using STT MRAM technology, rather than Everspin’s existing production toggle MRAM technology.

For the past decade or so memory researchers have been looking to Spin Transfer Torque (sometimes called “Spin Torque Transfer”) MRAMs as a way of getting to tighter processes than conventional toggle MRAM.  It seems that current densities in toggle MRAM rise too high as the process shrinks – at some point the process could no longer scale since chips would burn themselves out during programming.  The ST-RAM paves Everspin’s path toward Continue reading “Everspin Samples First STT MRAM”

Alternative Memory Technologies Patiently Wait For Market to Explode

Cross Section of a PCM Bit CellLane Mason of Objective Analysis recently shared with The Memory Guy an article he wrote for the 4 April 2007 Denali Memory Report covering Phase Change Memory (PCM or PRAM.)  It looked like something big was about to happen with the technology: PCM looked nearly ready to enter production.

The article included an excerpt of an EE Times interview with Micron’s CEO, the late Steve Appleton, in which Appleton stated that PCM advocates threatened to take over the memory market in 2000.

Here it is 2012, and PCM represents little more than a drop in the bucket when it comes to memory sales, although Continue reading “Alternative Memory Technologies Patiently Wait For Market to Explode”

The End of Flash Scaling

The End is at Hand for NAND Flash ScalingEveryone knows that flash memory is about to hit its scaling limit – it’s right around the corner.  We’re ready for it because it’s been right around the corner for more than a decade now.  It’s so close we can taste it.

When will it happen?

One thing that is quite clear is that nobody knows when NAND flash will stop scaling.  Everyone knows that it’s soon, but researchers continue to find ways to push the technology another couple of process nodes past where anyone thought it could possibly go, and they have been doing this since Continue reading “The End of Flash Scaling”