Sandisk and Toshiba dabble in ReRAM

WHILE WE WAIT for traditional flash technology to reach the end of the miniaturisation curve, Sandisk and Toshiba have manufactured a test chip that uses ReRAM or resistive Random Access Memory technology, which is also referred to as the memristor.

The chip has been manufactured on a 24nm fab process and has a capacity of 32GB.

ReRAM has several advantages over flash insofar as the memory cells are individually addressable like traditional dynamic RAM. In addition it is also non-volatile, which means that it does not lose data when power is turned off.

The details about the chip are contained in the preliminary program from the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). It also mentions that the chip has been optimised by adding a separate area under the ReRAM cells that contains most of the control logic for the chip.

What still remain a mystery are the endurance and power consumption, as well as the speed.

Keep in mind that this is a test chip, where the goal is to demonstrate that there are other technologies almost ready to compete with traditional flash technology.

We'll bring you a full report on the ReRAM chip from the ISSCC in February. µ