Category Archives: MRAM

Future Memory: The MemCon Panel. What comes after NAND Flash and DRAM?

Posted on September 6, 2012 by sleibson2

Just announced, there’s a pre-lunch panel at MemCon covering future memories. There are several new memory technologies that would usurp the thrones from DRAM and NAND Flash memory. Will any succeed? Come and hear the panel to find out. Jim … Continue reading →

Posted in DRAM, Flash, MRAM, NAND | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Want to know why SK hynix is placing its bets on three different alternatives to DRAM and Flash?

Posted on August 27, 2012 by sleibson2

Last week at the Flash Memory Summit, Dr. Sung Wook Park spoke about memory. No surprise there, but there were several surprises in Park’s presentation. The first surprise popped up in the slide immediately following the keynote presentation’s title slide: … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, DRAM, Flash, HDD, Hynix, Memristor, MRAM, NAND, PCM, ReRAM, SRAM, SSD | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

44Tbyte Skyera Skyhawk SSD employs Everspin MRAM as write cache

Posted on August 20, 2012 by sleibson2

NAND Flash memory would be perfect for nonvolatile storage because except that Flash write speeds are slow enough to create a window of time when write transactions could be lost during a power failure. This problem is especially acute for … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, MRAM, NAND, SSD, Storage | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Friday Video: A personal invitation to Memcon from Sanjay Srivastava

Posted on August 17, 2012 by sleibson2

Want to know why you need to be at Memcon this year? Here’s Denali Software founder Sanjay Srivastava to tell you why: Now go and sign up! It’s a free ticket and includes breakfast, lunch, and some goodies—not to mention … Continue reading →

Posted in DDR3, DDR4, DRAM, Flash, HMC, Hybrid Memory Cube, JEDEC, LPDDR2, LPDDR3, LPDDR4, Memcon, MRAM, mSATA, NAND, NOR, NVM Express, NVMe, ONFI, PCIe, Samsung, SAS, SATA, SD, SDRAM | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Fast update on STT MRAM vendor Avalanche Technology: They’ve been here since 2006

Posted on August 3, 2012 by sleibson2

Alan Niebel, CEO of Web-Feet Research, commented via LinkedIn on yesterday’s blog post about STT MRAM vendor Avalanche Technology: “Avalanche has been in the STT MRAM race for over four years now. They are not late to the party, they … Continue reading →

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Who do you want to see at Memcon?

Posted on July 24, 2012 by sleibson2

As the emcee for the Memcon event on September 18, I’ve been given the opportunity to personally invite a few, select exhibitors to the show and to cut them a very sweet deal. To do that, I’d like to know … Continue reading →

Posted in DDR, DRAM, Flash, MRAM, NAND, SSD | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jim Handy, The Memory Guy, writes that Flash memory is dead…but perhaps not just yet

Posted on June 28, 2012 by sleibson2

My good friend Jim Handy—who writes several blogs including The Memory Guy and The SSD Guy—recently published a blog titled “The End of Flash Scaling.” He writes: “Everyone knows that flash memory is about to hit its scaling limit – … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, Flash, Memristor, MRAM, ReRAM, SSD | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

SK Hynix places bet on third wannabe non-volatile memory technology, phase-change memory, with IBM

Posted on June 13, 2012 by sleibson2

When I was really young, I used to play a card game called “Pit” where you tried to corner the market on a particular commodity like oranges, sugar, soybeans, or corn. The game was based on the trading pits of … Continue reading →

Posted in Hynix, Memristor, MRAM, NAND, PCM | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Flash Memory Summit 2012, Santa Clara, CA. Registration now open

Posted on June 12, 2012 by sleibson2

Every year, the Flash Memory Summit rolls into Silicon Valley to discuss the latest in Flash memory, SSDs, and possibly up-and-coming alternative non-volatile memory technologies. This year, the event takes place on August 21-23 at the Santa Clara Convention Center … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, MRAM, NAND, SSD, Storage | Tagged , | Leave a comment

So just how big is the semiconductor memory market? $50 billion? $60 billion?

Posted on June 8, 2012 by sleibson2

Yesterday, Jeremy Wagstaff, Chief Technology Correspondent for Reuters in Asia, published an article on wannabe non-volatile memory technologies such as MRAM and Memristors or ReRAM (See “Pushing the PRAM: when chips just can’t get any smaller”). The lure is a … Continue reading →

Posted in DRAM, Flash, Memristor, MRAM | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Will SSDs be the first big market for 3D NAND Flash memories?

Posted on June 7, 2012 by sleibson2

I’ve been meaning to write about a comment regarding NAND Flash memory and SSDs written by Thomas McCormick in LinkedIn’s Solid State Storage Group and this seems like the perfect time. McCormick is an Integrated Hardware/Software Product Development Leader at … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, DDR, DRAM, Flash, Memristor, MRAM, NAND, SSD, Storage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

MRAM spotted in Buffalo Memory SSD—for cache

Posted on May 30, 2012 by sleibson2

Several sources including TomsHardware.com have reported the appearance at the 15th Embedded Systems Expo in Japan of an SSD built by Buffalo Memory Company with MRAM for cache memory. The drive uses 8Mbytes of MRAM (magnetic RAM) as a cache … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, MRAM, SSD | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Semiconductor memory plays a large role in smartphone design says Matti Floman of Nokia

Posted on May 16, 2012 by sleibson2

“There’s no real difference between PCs and mobile phones today,” said Matti Floman from Nokia who gave the first keynote speech at last week’s JEDEC Mobile Forum. There is no difference in the types of applications run; there’s no difference … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, DDR, LPDDR2, Memristor, MRAM, SDRAM, Storage, UFS | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

4th International Memory Workshop in Milan tackles all things non-volatile with respect to semiconductor memory. May 20-23

Posted on April 9, 2012 by sleibson2

You will need to travel to Milan, Italy to attend the 4-day intensive event devoted to non-volatile memory, which seems to be the exclusive topic for the 4th International Memory Workshop Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits covers latest STT-MRAM … Continue reading →

Posted in DRAM, Flash, Memristor, MRAM, NAND, ReRAM, Storage | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits covers latest STT-MRAM developments

Posted on April 9, 2012 by sleibson2

Session 7 of the 2012 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits is all about Spin-Torque-Transfer Magnetic RAM (STT-MRAM), one of the several technologies hoping to challenge NAND Flash memory for the top spot in the non-volatile memory hierarchy. Five presentations … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, MRAM, NAND | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

ISQED: Who and what will win the Universal Memory Derby?

Posted on March 23, 2012 by sleibson2

Professor Cristophe Muller of Aix-Marseille University gave an excellent overview of non-volatile semiconductor memory as the third ISQED keynote this week. It’s a very good overview of today’s landscape and well worth discussing in a wider forum like this blog. … Continue reading →

Posted in DRAM, Flash, Memristor, Micron, MRAM, NAND, NOR, ReRAM, SDRAM | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

MRAM pairs with digital neuron chip to create pattern-recognizer board stackable to 1M neurons

Posted on March 5, 2012 by sleibson2

Last week at the Embedded World 2012 event in Nuremberg, Germany, CogniMem Technologies demonstrated its 4096-neuron CogniBlox module that combines four of the companys 1K-neuron CM1K chips with 4Mbytes of Everspin MRAM. The MRAM is used to quickly load stored … Continue reading →

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The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Paper predicts the bleak future of SSDs and NAND Flash memory

Posted on February 21, 2012 by sleibson2

An interesting and disturbing paper titled “The Bleak Future of NAND Flash Memory” written by two researchers at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one Microsoft employee uses current trends with … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, Flash, Memcon, Memristor, Micron, MLC, MRAM, NAND, SSD | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

STT MRAM startup Spin Transfer Technologies secures $36M in Series A funding

Posted on February 20, 2012 by sleibson2

Last week, STT MRAM startup Spin Transfer Technologies announced that it had secured $36M in Series A financing from Allied Minds and Invesco Asset Management. Spin Transfer Technologies is developing an “orthogonal” version of STT (spin transfer technology—the technology, not … Continue reading →

Posted in Flash, MRAM, NAND | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Is MRAM ramping up to the big time?

Posted on January 18, 2012 by sleibson2

Today, MRAM (magnetic RAM) supplier Everspin announced that it expects to close out FY 2011 with a shipment volume that exceeds that of 2010 by more than a factor of three. MRAM combines the thin-film magnetics initially developed for the … Continue reading →

Posted in DRAM, Flash, MRAM, NAND | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment