5 ms·

To be clear these (Resistive RAM and Magnetic RAM) are really competitors to Flash (EPROM) rather than DRAM or 3D XPoint from Intel. Their main advantages are

by kurthr 8y ago

To be clear these (Resistive RAM and Magnetic RAM) are really competitors to Flash (EPROM) rather than DRAM or 3D XPoint from Intel. Their main advantages are process simplification (Flash requires a LOT of extra layers) and cost rather than speed. In the industry people are very careful with new Non-volatile memories, because the failures may have long (delayed) failure modes that cause horrible problems and liability. I'm fairly positive on these two choices (Re&M-RAM) mostly because people have learned to be fairly sceptical and require a lot of testing and they are porting to mulitiple Fabs. Even with the license it will be at least 12 months before there could be customer samples from the first licensee, Microsemi.

wtallis 8y ago
MRAM has so far been primarily a competitor to SRAM and NOR flash, but definitely not to NAND flash. ReRAM as an embedded memory will be competing in a similar space, but as a discrete memory will probably be most comparable to 3D XPoint.
- bpye 8y ago
  I assume MRAM and FRAM refer to the same thing? If so Texas Instruments have some pretty cool (I think) microcontrollers using FRAM allowing for a user defined spit between volatile and non vatime memory, the MSP430FRxx series, I don't think they have it in any ARM parts though.
  - wtallis 8y ago
    No, FRAM is quite different from MRAM. A FRAM cell has a single ferroelectric element that is read destructively (just like magnetic core memory). A MRAM cell has a pair of magnetic elements and resistance through one of them varies depending on whether the magnetization is aligned with the other element. That resistance is measured non-destructively.
deepnotderp 8y ago
ReRAM is, but MRAM was definitely positioned as a competitor to eDRAM and SRAM for low end applications (it's generally unstable at higher frequencies)
0xdead_beef 8y ago
Microsemi primarily deals with the aerospace industry and manufactures radiation-tolerant FPGAs; Their latest product line is a series of Flash-based reprogrammable devices (RTG4). Perhaps these alternative memory technologies lend to better data integrity.

by kurthr 8y ago

wtallis 8y ago

MRAM has so far been primarily a competitor to SRAM and NOR flash, but definitely not to NAND flash. ReRAM as an embedded memory will be competing in a similar space, but as a discrete memory will probably be most comparable to 3D XPoint.

bpye 8y ago
I assume MRAM and FRAM refer to the same thing? If so Texas Instruments have some pretty cool (I think) microcontrollers using FRAM allowing for a user defined spit between volatile and non vatime memory, the MSP430FRxx series, I don't think they have it in any ARM parts though.
- wtallis 8y ago
  No, FRAM is quite different from MRAM. A FRAM cell has a single ferroelectric element that is read destructively (just like magnetic core memory). A MRAM cell has a pair of magnetic elements and resistance through one of them varies depending on whether the magnetization is aligned with the other element. That resistance is measured non-destructively.

deepnotderp 8y ago

ReRAM is, but MRAM was definitely positioned as a competitor to eDRAM and SRAM for low end applications (it's generally unstable at higher frequencies)

0xdead_beef 8y ago

Microsemi primarily deals with the aerospace industry and manufactures radiation-tolerant FPGAs; Their latest product line is a series of Flash-based reprogrammable devices (RTG4). Perhaps these alternative memory technologies lend to better data integrity.