November 14, 2012 at 00:03Everspin begins shipping STT-MRAM
For several years, rumors have been circulating about the development of new types of computer memory, but so far these projects have remained at the level of laboratory experiments or, at best, piece production. Fortunately, the situation is gradually starting to change. Everspin, a magneto-resistive memory company, has announced the launch of 64-megabyte modules. Previously, the maximum volume of chips produced by them was only 16 megabits, and MRAM technology did not allow to significantly increase the density of the composition, since this causes an excessive increase in the recording current. New modules use Spin-transfer torque technology), when to change the field orientation in a magnetic material, it is not the imposition of an external magnetic field, but the flowing current, in which electrons with the desired spin direction prevail. This circumvented the problem of increasing chip density.
The new modules comply with the DDR3 standard, which allows you to use them both for creating SSD-drives, and in DIMM-modules of RAM. However, although their speed is quite high (up to 3.2 Gb / s), the access time is still lame and exceeds that of ordinary RAM by about an order of magnitude, so this configuration is unlikely to be widespread.
Of course, at this stage, MRAM seems not to be competitive enough compared to NAND Flash. The density of the chips is still too low, the cost is extremely high (about 50 times higher than that of NAND), the power consumption also does not shine (5 times more), but MRAM also has strengths, such as very high performance and low cell wear with overwrite them. In any case, Everspin is full of optimism and plans in the coming years to achieve gigabit packing density using 20 nm technology and is even considering the possibility of replacing DRAM-RAM that is familiar to everyone with new memory.
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