Posted on 07/20/2011 6:45:42 AM PDT by Red Badger
Korean researchers working out of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology report in a paper published in Nature Materials, that they've been able to create a non-volatile Resistance RAM (ReRam) chip capable of withstanding a trillion read/write cycles, all with a switching time of just 10ns (about a million times faster than current flash chips), paving the way for a possible upgrade to flash memory cards.
ReRam chips are non-volatile, meaning they can retain stored information in the absence of power and are currently made using a Ta2O5 (tantalum) film, the new chips developed by the Samsung team uses Ta2O5-x/TaO2-x as filaments to create a bi-layer structure, rather than coating the entire surface with the metallic substance.
The authors report in the paper that they believe their chip uses less power than other experimental ReRam chips and should be suitable as a potential replacement for current flash memory devices.
The research is part of the IMEC consortium comprised of some of the biggest names in chip research; in addition to Samsung, other participants include Intel, Panasonic, NVIDIA and many others. The ultimate goal is to seek out new frontiers in the advancement of nano-electronics.
Resistive random access memory is based on the idea of a dielectric, which is a substance that is normally insulating, but when jolted with sufficient power, becomes a conductor. It’s this property that allows information to get in and then to be held inside after the power is removed; sort of like pushing an object through a rubber gasket, it takes force to get both in and out. To use the substance in a memory chip, a path must be maintained though it in both directions and that is what the metallic filaments are for, to carry signals through the dielectric substance. The filaments are then gated, which means the path through can be broken and unbroken to allow current to pass through or not. In this new research, many filaments, or paths, are created to increase the amount of information that can come and go with any one jolt of electricity.
The only down side to the new research is that it appears it won’t be ready to go to market for a while, as more research is needed. In the meantime, we’ll all just have to be careful with how much reading and writing we do with our flash drives.
More information: A fast, high-endurance and scalable non-volatile memory device made from asymmetric Ta2O5−x/TaO2−x bilayer structures, Nature Materials (2011) doi:10.1038/nmat3070
Abstract Numerous candidates attempting to replace Si-based flash memory have failed for a variety of reasons over the years. Oxide-based resistance memory and the related memristor have succeeded in surpassing the specifications for a number of device requirements. However, a material or device structure that satisfies high-density, switching-speed, endurance, retention and most importantly power-consumption criteria has yet to be announced. In this work we demonstrate a TaOx-based asymmetric passive switching device with which we were able to localize resistance switching and satisfy all aforementioned requirements. In particular, the reduction of switching current drastically reduces power consumption and results in extreme cycling endurances of over 1012. Along with the 10 ns switching times, this allows for possible applications to the working-memory space as well. Furthermore, by combining two such devices each with an intrinsic Schottky barrier we eliminate any need for a discrete transistor or diode in solving issues of stray leakage current paths in high-density crossbar arrays.
INSTANTANEOUS ACCESS!
Can a ultra-super-duper fast solid state 'hard drive' be far away?.......................
Tanta-lizing.
10nS memory chips ping!.................
I’m drooling on my keyboard!.....................more than usual..........
This new memory is expected be able to perform a trillion operations before conking out. That’s a lot, but I still wouldn’t want to see it used for something terribly busy like swap space, without wear-out indicators. It would work smashingly good — for maybe about a year.
The question is... will this go the way of rambus (RDRAM)?
...but I assume these will end up in high-end (big $$$) server class drives first before trickling down to the consumer level :(
This is just mind bogglingly fast!
Imagine boot-up seemingly instantaneously!
Imagine 3-D video in real time!
Imagine televideo online in real time!
Imagine a super heavy graphics web page loading instantly!
Imagine whirled peas!................
After a year your computer will be obsolete, anyway!..................
It has always been thus, Grasshopper........................
Only time will tell...........the Market will decide.................
all with a switching time of just 10ns (about a million times faster than current flash chips)
So it takes about 0.01 seconds to read or write flash memory? Sounds like some author went into journalism because he didn't have a chance at a math degree.
Tantalum oxides can also be used in coating telescope mirrors.
Yeah, it's hard to reconcile that with the current SSDs which can write at >100MB/s or better (let's see, that's.... hmmmm.... 10nsec/byte. Even with interleaving, and block read/write, there ain't a factor of a million in there).
Somewhere, some apples and oranges are being compared...
Does that mean you can see only a trillion miles?.................
Math and science are not required courses in Journalism Skool.............
I just did a quick calculation. Let’s say a particular part of storage is rewritten 100 times a second 24/7/365. That means ten billion seconds, with a trillion ops max we end up with 317 years of writes.
We’re so used to hearing trillion all the time, we often forget it’s a really big number.
I’d think that reads would be gentler on the devices than writes, but without technical details from the horse’s mouth who knows? Even if they are, it would require careful programming for routines intended to run in the new memory. “register” really needs to mean something. One stack variable in the memory and you could (i=0; i<N; i++) the hell out of the device before you knew it.
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