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Samsung will ship battery life saving memory
KOREAN CONGLOMERATE Samsung is shipping phase-change memory in a multi-chip package (MCP) that could extend the battery life of a next generation of smartphones.
The company calls its phase-change memory PRAM, for "Programmable RAM", and expects it to replace NOR flash in consumer electronic design and become a major technology.
PRAM stores data using the phase change characteristics of its base material, which is made from an alloy of germanium, antimony and titanium. Samsung claims it has three times faster data storage performance per word than NOR chips.
The BBC said that the technology could extend battery life by up to 20 per cent due to the material recording or erasing data when it is heated and typically using far less power than existing equivalents.
Samsung said it is capable of replacing NOR flash in devices that require high-speed, high-density nonvolatile memory in mobile phones and other mobile applications such as MP3 players, personal multimedia players and navigational devices.
The 512Mb PRAM that Samsung will ship is backwards compatible with 40nm class NOR flash memory in both hardware and software functionality.
This means that mobile handset designers will have multi-chip packaging which is compatible with prior stand-alone phase-memory change technologies.
PRAM memory is said to combine the non-volatile nature of Flash memory with the high-speed capability of DRAM. Its simple cell structure should make designing MCP chips for handsets a faster and easier process.
The other company that deals with phase-change memory is Numonyx, which has agreed to jointly develop specifications for the technology with Samsung. µ
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If this is a replacement for NOR, then this in no way is going to go into MP3 players and flash storage devices. Go do some research on NAND vs. NOR.
Also, we don't really care about power savings during write, as mobile devices typically only read when on battery power. And in the case of flash-based SSDs, the flash power consumption is negligible vs the consumption of the controller itself.
When at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Why are you citing a BBC website article again? They have one of the lamest "technology" sections around, only surpassed by their sensationalized garbage articles on research studies. Certainly you could've found some better source, you know, because you purport to be a tech site?
Asavin:
Don't you realize that you were duped?
Samsung's PRAM contains no TITANIUM! That press release by Samsung was a joke - actually, a test to see whether publications like the The Inquirer have any clue about memory technology. The Inquirer failed miserably.
Samsung's PRAM is 65nm, not 40nm. Samsung's PRAM does not write (sustained) 3x as fast as modern NOR (which writes at 2 megabytes per second). Numonyx does not develop any PRAM (they just issue press releases and produce webcasts).
No product on the market uses any PRAM. PRAM will never be manufactured in volume. Samsung did not even bother to mention PRAM yesterday on their earnings call.
That's no moon.
Uh, wrong quote. I meant to say, I have a bad feeling about this.
I have a very hot laptop.
The biggest problem I see is they are already manufacturing at 40nm which means they will have to grow the chip size in order to increase the density as a smaller process alone will not get them there. I'm willing to bet that because they are sticking to the same packaging as current flash chips, that will be difficult for them and when you compare the density with current flash chips (32Gb), I think they are going to have a hard time selling this as a replacement to flash even if it performs faster and uses less power. This will be a niche product.