Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Wednesday 7 March 2007, 11:34 PM
Intel gears up for phase change memory
Intel says it is about to sample 128Mbit phase change memory in the first half of this year, with production possible in the second.
I've written about phase change memory before, and it's encouraging to see that everyone's sticking to schedule. Phase change memory uses a single transistor per bit, with a tiny dollop of the same compound as used in rewriteable optical disks. Heat it strongly and it changes to one state, less and it cools differently. That's quite different to normal flash memory design, which makes the fabrication process challenging to design, but the potential wins are significant. Although phase change memory works like flash - remembering what it's stored even when power's removed - it should be able to work at the same speed as dynamic RAM. That means computers that can suspend with no battery back-up, instant-on, and lots of potential power saving tricks.
Can't wait.
I've written about phase change memory before, and it's encouraging to see that everyone's sticking to schedule. Phase change memory uses a single transistor per bit, with a tiny dollop of the same compound as used in rewriteable optical disks. Heat it strongly and it changes to one state, less and it cools differently. That's quite different to normal flash memory design, which makes the fabrication process challenging to design, but the potential wins are significant. Although phase change memory works like flash - remembering what it's stored even when power's removed - it should be able to work at the same speed as dynamic RAM. That means computers that can suspend with no battery back-up, instant-on, and lots of potential power saving tricks.
Can't wait.
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