Memory
The latest approach to low-power computer memory
The growing field of spin electronics - spintronics - tells us that electrons spin like a top, carry angular momentum, and can be controlled as units of power, free of conventional electric current. Nonvolatile magnetic memory based on the "spin torques" of these spinning electrons has been recently commercialised as STT-MRAM (spin transfer torque-magnetic random access memory).
DRAM looks set to be 2016's worst-performing market
The year 2016 is not expected to be a good one for the total memory market and the main culprit is DRAM. Declining shipments of desktop and notebook computers, the biggest users of DRAM, as well as declining tablet PC shipments and slowing growth of smartphone units have created excess inventory and suppliers have been forced to greatly reduce average selling prices in order to move parts, says IC Insights.
Memory chips could soon operate 1,000 times faster
Silicon memory chips come in two broad types: volatile memory, such as computer RAM that loses data when the power is turned off, and nonvolatile flash technologies that store information even after we shut off our smartphones. In general, volatile memory is much faster than nonvolatile storage, so engineers often balance speed and retention when picking the best memory for the task. That's why slower flash is used for permanent storage.
Flash memories span 1Gbit, 2Gbit and 4Gbit
The portfolio of memory products for embedded applications has bee expanded at distributor Rutronik with the new line-up of 24nm SLC NAND flash memory products from Toshiba. They are compatible with the widely used Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). New functional requirements increase the demand of embedded memory, for software (boot programs, firmware, embedded OS) and data (including log data).
Latest report on emerging non-volatile memory
A report recently released by Yole Développement (Yole) has shown that emerging NVM sales are still moderate, announcing a $53m market in 2015. According to the ‘More than Moore’ market research and strategy consulting company, this market is limited to niche markets due to the limited density available.
Addressing the needs of enterprise systems with production-ready PHY IP
Using its 14nm Power Plus (LPP) process, Rambus has announced that it has developed an R+ DDR4 PHY on the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 14-FX ASIC platform.
Efficient way to write data into non-volatile memory devices
A scheme to write data into next-gen memory chips has been developed by A*STAR Data Storage Institute researchers. The proposal by Jun Yang and colleagues requires considerably less resources to write data safely into memory—even during a system failure. Non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies are the likely successor to current computer memory devices.
64-layer 3D flash memory features stacked cell structure
Toshiba unveiled today the latest generation of its BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory with a stacked cell structure, a 64-layer device that will be first in the world to start sample shipments today. The new device incorporates 3-bit-per-cell (Triple-Level Cell, TLC) technology and achieves a 256Gb (32GB) capacity, an advance that underscores the potential of Toshiba’s proprietary architecture.
World’s First UFS removable memory card line-up
Samsung Electronics unveiled the industry’s first removable memory cards based on the JEDEC UFS 1.0 Card Extension Standard, for use in high-resolution mobile shooting devices such as DSLRs, 3D VR cameras, action cams and drones. Coming in a wide range of storage capacities including 256, 128, 64 and 32 GB, Samsung’s UFS cards are expected to bring a significant performance boost to the external memory storage market, allowing much mo...
Reduce data centre memory power consumption by 60%
Renesas Electronics has announced a packet header search reference design for 100Gb communications devices such as routers, switches and servers. The reference design is comprised of: the LLDRAM-III (RMHE41A364AGBG) power-efficient, LLDRAM; proprietary exact-match search IP and LLDRAM-III controller IP on an FPGA device; and development support tools.