Has anyone heard of this new mram? If they replace our ram with this we could never wat for startup again. Her is an article I found
http://www.rr.com/flash/index.cfm
http://www.rr.com/flash/index.cfm
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DAVID KOENIG said:DALLAS(AP) Achieving a long-sought goal of the $48 billion memory chip industry, Freescale Semiconductor Inc. announced the commercial availability of a chip that combines traditional memory's endurance with a hard drive's ability to keep data while powered down.
The chips, called magnetoresistive random-access memory or MRAM, maintain information by relying on magnetic properties rather than an electrical charge. Unlike flash memory, which also can keep data without power, MRAM is fast to read and write bits, and doesn't degrade over time.
Freescale, which was spun off of Motorola Inc. in July 2004, said Monday it has been producing the 4-megabit MRAM chips at an Arizona factory for two months to build inventory. A number of chip makers have been pursuing the technology for a decade or more, including IBM Corp.
Sometimes referred to as "universal" memory, MRAM could displace a number of chips found in every electronic device, from PCs, cell phones, music players and cameras to the computing components of kitchen appliances, cars and airplanes.
"This is the most significant memory introduction in this decade," said Will Strauss, an analyst with research firm Forward Concepts. "This is radically new technology. People have been dabbling in this for years, but nobody has been able to make it in volume."
Electronic memory is ubiquitous in today's world, but each flavor of memory-chip technology has different strengths and weaknesses. Often times, a single device has multiple types of memory chips to take advantage of the benefits of a particular technology.
Static and dynamic random access memory chips, used in PCs and elsewhere, are fast but lose data when the power is switched off. Flash memory chips, which are commonly found in music players, cameras and cell phones, retain information but are slower and degrade over time.
Kurz said:I am not sure about this, however I read that MRAM is already reaching the limits of shrinking.
JigPu said:And if that is true, this is definatly not going to be replacing hard drives.
4 Megabit = 0.5 Megabyte.
Even assuming the ludicrously low price of $1 per chip, a 1GB drive (to boot XP) would still be $2000. And you thought using RAM as a hard drive was expensive!
JigPu