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Well I'll be...they finally commercialized MRAM!

post #1 of 11
7/10/06 at 5:47am
Thread Starter 
http://eetimes.com/news/semi/showArt...leID=190301247

and

http://apnews.myway.com//article/200...D8IOU6C00.html


To summarize for those of you who don't know what MRAM is (and didn't bother to RTFA): it's a sort of nonvolatile RAM that's about as fast as standard SDRAM (35 nanosecond access time). Note the nonvolatile part too--turn the power off, turn it back on, and the MRAM still has your data...

Oh forgot to mention, it's official name is magneto-resistive RAM.

Great news.
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post #2 of 11
7/10/06 at 1:44pm
wow, that sounds really cool. Ram thats kind of like a mini storage space that retains its info after shutdown
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post #3 of 11
7/10/06 at 1:52pm
Thread Starter 
The article has a Freescale guy (Freescale is the company making this part) saying that the target application is to replace FLASH in current devices like Flash-based mp3 players, etc. I still say, though, that this would be a big boon to ultraportable notebook computers--think about it: you could, theoretically, replace the hard drive with these MRAMs. Or at least augment the hard drive--say, by placing the OS in MRAM; in other words, it would be great for hibernation/suspend operation.
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post #4 of 11
7/10/06 at 2:06pm
hmm if an OS got small enough...could you boot from Mram? like a 2 second boot would be the bomb....
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post #5 of 11
7/10/06 at 2:34pm
I've read about this before, very interesting technology, and no max read/write cycle problems that exist with current flash memories. this would definitely be great for notebooks, great read/write times compared to traditional drives (35ns vs 8-11ms, i.e. 0.035ms vs 8ms...). Density should ramp up nicely going with the 90nm process as well. now about that cost.... :x
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post #6 of 11
7/10/06 at 8:06pm
You can already run from just RAM. There's programs that'll create a virtual disc out of your RAM. or at least there were about 7 or 8 years ago. I'm sure they still exist now though and the plus side is it's actually doable with the low RAM prices we're enjoying lately.
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post #7 of 11
7/10/06 at 9:10pm
this is just ONE means to an end. with as fast as computers are getting these days, i have NO idea why there are even mechanical HDs still.

i just wish the Manufacturers would realize they are becoming a bottleneck/.
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post #8 of 11
7/10/06 at 10:29pm
yeah, I'd love to have a system that stored the OS in MRAM and loaded everything into some even higher speed SDRAM and also had enough non-volatile RAM to hold a bunch of games, antivirus software, apps like Photoshop..
oh yeah, that would be sweet
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post #9 of 11
7/11/06 at 11:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by chevyrulz099
this is just ONE means to an end. with as fast as computers are getting these days, i have NO idea why there are even mechanical HDs still.

i just wish the Manufacturers would realize they are becoming a bottleneck/.

One reason, which I think has been overcome, is that the price per gigabyte still seems a bit high in the eyes of manufacturers (though I would pay for it).

The second obstacle, which also is very close to being overcome, is the limited numer of reads/writes on flash memory before it loses its ability to do so. Apparently MRAM eliminates this entirely, which is totall sweet.
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post #10 of 11
7/11/06 at 12:02pm
i so happy

one day no more mechanical HDs

probably 20 yrs but still.
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post #11 of 11
7/12/06 at 11:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by chevyrulz099
i so happy one day no more mechanical HDs probably 20 yrs but still.
MRAM might give reason for more Linux based OS's too since they're typically smaller than a Windows (so i'm told). Windows is such a BEAST when it comes to file size.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dman22
yeah, I'd love to have a system that stored the OS in MRAM and loaded everything into some even higher speed SDRAM and also had enough non-volatile RAM to hold a bunch of games, antivirus software, apps like Photoshop.. oh yeah, that would be sweet
Or at least until it becomes more advanced, just having enough space on MRAM to store the most used apps on your system. IE photoshop and AV programs. Still going to need a Harddrive for the longrun for file storage.
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