Hynix muscles into FeRAM market

SOUTH KOREAN FIRM HYNIX has started sampling its first FeRAMs, the biggest new thing in memory technology for years. FeRAM works by moving iron atoms around inside ferroelectric crystals and keeps its contents even when there is no power going through it.

Hynix has been a busy bee with this type of memory. According to SiliconStrategies, the company has filed over 150 patents relating to FeRAM. The chips that are currently sampling are 4 and 8megabit with a 90ns data access speed. Hynix has said that it will start to make 64megabit chips in the near future.

You can certainly expect to see many companies moving into FeRAM, Hynix has predicted that the market will be worth $10billion by 2006. The memory is ideal for use in mobile phones and PDAs. It is the obvious successor to the much slower Flash memories.

In related news, M. Watanabe & Co. has announced a new way of producing FeRAMs that should be much faster and more efficient. Its metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) system allows non-stop production of FeRAM. Previous manufacturing systems had to be stopped on a regular basis because of clogging. Watanabe claims its new machines are non-clogging. µ

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