MRAM dev sped up.

[Jammrock]

Just caught this article:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0%2C1282%2C59559%2C00.html

It looks like we'll start seeing MRAM faster than everyone expected. 20 GB MRAM hard drive, here I come!

Jammrock

[Kooldino]

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing these ASAP...

[Dr Mordrid]

Nor would I. Sounds like a great idea to me....

Dr. Mordrid

[Marshmallowman]

Its starting to get very obvious why IBM sold their harddrive division now

[Dr Mordrid]

No...IBM sold their hardware division because their quality cover had been blown

Dr. Mordrid

[Marshmallowman]

Lets say its a bit of both, their HDD business took a dive due to reliabilty, it will take them year's to rectify(they could but won't)...in a couple of years IBM mram tech will start hitting its strides.

I am not going to argue, but I will tell you I told you so in 2005

[Technoid]

hm....
my first thought on ram that don't forget when you turn off the computer :
wtf to do when windows hang?

[moreau]

Two years ago when I was finishing grad school, I had an "interview" with Infineon at the APS March meeting job fair.

They outlined in general terms their timeline for rolling out MRAM devices. They were shooting for 2003-2005 or so...

When my eyes bugged out of my head, the Infineon rep expressed his own amazement at the agressiveness of the timeline.

Couple that with the fact that all the invited talks I had been hearing that week indicated there were serious obstacles (both with the technology and the underlying physics) yet to be overcome.

As I pondered these facts, my conspiratorial side made me think that perhaps the research that was presented into the public record belied the technologies they were devolping for immediate deployment.

Anywho... I'll be interested to see what physics the actual production devices employs...

BTW... basically the reason these MRAM devices are burning a hole in the pocket of the big companies is that they are almost too good to be true... Densites commensurate with current DRAM (capacitive) devices with speed more like SRAM (transistor) devices... Nonvolatile storage like flash or static devices without the pesky lifetime limitations (finite rewritability)... oh and they are affordable...

Kinda reminds me of the GMR read head triumph of a few years ago... IBM developed the GMR readheads for HD's that we all know and love, and that had exactly the same mechanical dimensions as the older inductive readheads... but it's electrical properties were orders of magnitude better. But it is the first fact that allowed their rapid integration into HD's. There was all but no reengineering of the rest of the HD to begin using them... Such a thing seldom happens so fortuitously...

Sorry for the long reply... not very often does the stuff I do for a living come into a conversation...

Cheers,
Dr. Moreau

[moreau]

Sorry to respond to my own post...

The article linked above said something I don't care for...

While magnetic recording (tape, HD's) and MRAM both involve the physics of magnetism, they are very different in both implementation and design philosophy... e.g. the R in MRAM is for "Random", after all...




Dr. Moreau

[Jammrock]

Originally posted by Technoid
hm....
my first thought on ram that don't forget when you turn off the computer :
wtf to do when windows hang?

I discussed this with my brother at Micron who could neither confirm or deny whether Micron was working on MRAM. That's why hard drives won't go away any time soon, and maybe never. HDD's are cheap and have massive amounts of capacity, and if something goes wrong with the MRAM drive, your hard drive could restore an image of the OS and you're back up and running.

Jammrock

[Technoid]

On a PDA it makes sence to have that memory but not on a desktop computer

[Tjalfe]

Could you not just have the memory cleared during post, hence a hung windows will not still be in memory after a hard boot.


/*edit: typo */

[Jon P. Inghram]

Lets see... "speed more like SRAM devices"... that enough of a reason? If this MRAM is fast enough to replace conventional DRAM that'd be really awesome, no more annoying refresh cycles and junk.

Originally posted by Technoid
On a PDA it makes sence to have that memory but not on a desktop computer

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Technoid
hm....
my first thought on ram that don't forget when you turn off the computer :
wtf to do when windows hang?

It would be initialized on boot, the same as any other memory. Duh, not hard.

[High_Jumbllama]

This ram is faster than flash but not faster than current memory. You don't use it for system memory at least not in a PC. In a handheld on the other hand maybe.