went to a seminar today... Mram!?

[dowxp]

IBM guy talked about non-volative ram called Mram. it uses small magnets with wire coiles to induce polarity to serve as memory, as a result, when voltage is lost, memory is still present. thus, we can shutdown our computers without having to "boot" up again. like sleep, but not from hd, but from ram.... any ideas?

 

[Schlocemus]

<< it uses small magnets with wire coiles >>



Was he talking about Solenoids by any chance?

 

[jimmygates]

I read about this in some article a while back. Normal RAM loses its data once voltage is lost. With MRam, the data is still held even when the voltage is lost.


"thus, we can shutdown our computers without having to "boot" up again. like sleep, but not from hd, but from ram.... any ideas?"


This is kind of like Suspend to Ram but with the ability to do with the computer off.



-Jimbo

 

[Noj]

How long does it store data for? What are it's advantages over Flash memory?

 

[dowxp]

<< Was he talking about Solenoids by any chance? >>

he didnt get that technical. we was technical enough considering it was a IEEE meeting.



<< <FONT size=3>How long does it store data for? What are it's advantages over Flash memory? >>

im not sure, the guy said it was still in 2mb form, but i will be ramped up quickly once prelims are done. advantages? i guess it can be used as sram. latency and bandwidth is higher than flash?</FONT>

 

[MadRat]

Perhaps this is the inexpensive memory mainboard makers have been waiting for?

 

[Schlocemus]

Any links yet?

I did a really quick search at google during my lunch period and I came up with this.

 

[dowxp]

still in its eaarly stages said the IBM guy. he heads the IC department of IBM

 

[BurntKooshie]

MRAM's been talked about for awhile now. Motorola's been huffing and puffing about it too. A site or two did some overviewing of it, and I could find it if you'd like. One person I've conversed with said that MRAM is a lot closer than some companies are letting on....but of course, that's 2nd hand knowledge, and not something I know directly.

 

[Fandu]

MRAM is for real. IBM's been working on it for a couple years now. IBM says that it's as fast as SDRAM, but cheaper to make and non-volatile. Take it for what you want. They've still got quite a few hurdles to jump before it ever makes it into the consumers hands.

 

[mtgcollector01]

It is estimated to come out 2004. From what I hear, it will be the price of SDR at 16x the performence. And it retains mem.

 

[crypticlogin]

I also read about MRAM a few years back and at that time, one of the cons against it was that it just couldn't meet the manufacturing densities of traditional memory. For that reason, it was (again, -3 or -4 years) envisioned for handhelds and other portable devices that needed static storage. This thread was the first I've read of it since then... anybody have any idea of the density? If they solved the density problem, think of how cheap portable storage could be!

edit: Finally got to read the document and seems like they've progressed huge bounds. very nice, very nice indeed.