MRAM - new type of memory :D

**Hunnter** · 01-11-2006

A new type of memory is under Research & Development

Magnetic RAM can run alot faster than regular RAM plus it uses around 99% LESS power than the RAM we have now!

Imagine a computer that doesn't lose data even in a sudden power outage, or a coin-sized hard drive that could store 100 or more movies.
Magnetic random-access memory, or MRAM, could make these possible, and would also offer numerous other advantages.
It would, for instance, operate at much faster than the speed of ordinary memory but consume 99 percent less energy.

More on the site, source: http://www.physorg.com/news9791.html

There was some problems with creating the memory fastly and cheaply.
Although they may have found a way to get around this problem using some nanorings designed by some researchers at The Johns Hopkins University.
So hopefully this means we will be able to get this in a few years or so!

The nanorings are 100nm big, which means roughly that they could fit 1 million in a human hair (length-wise that is, but whats an average hair-length... lol)

So im sure this is very great news for al computer people

This will be another great product thats come out of use from nanoparticles, good stuff!

Whats everyone think of this?

**law44uk** · 01-11-2006

Holy **** ! i want it now! lol. bet it wont be cheap.

**Hunnter** · 01-11-2006

Well probably not from the get-go, but it will get cheaper as time goes by.

And remember since it employs nano-tech to create this, it will possibly be cheaper if they can make the right manufacturing lines
These probably wont need nearly as much material as normal things since its capable of being compacted into smaller spaces.

So your general RAM chips are probably 4 inches for a laptop, with MRAM you could probably have an inch chip with double(+) the 4 inch chip and still use less power.
Thats why this is such an amazing annoncement, this is even better than finding Aliens! This could probably help more with finding Aliens!

**moofs** · 01-12-2006

MRAM FOR PS4!! WOOHOO!!

Well.. I can hope, heh. Should be available, not cheaply of course, by the end of this decade... hopefully.

**hoverbike** · 01-12-2006

This is great news because we need some RAM improvements in the future. The PS4 might use it and I want 40 GB of RAM! However the only thing that can beat it is Holographic Cube Memory which is 1000 GB and is much faster. Which will win?

**Hunnter** · 02-07-2006

Depends how high MRAM can get within a similar space, which we have yet to see

I hope to see from this soon though, this is really interesting, it could become easier to make than HCMs because its relatively simple to create the nanoparticles now.

We really do need an improvement in memory, XDR is pretty good, but we still need better memory, XDR is still not enough!

edit:
An update on MRAM, Toshiba and NEC have managed to create the fastest MRAM so far (what happened to the inbetween part, the problem solved.. wow the world moves fast

)
The MRAM they have produced can read speeds of 200megabit/s and operates at 1.8Volts, and has 16 megabit density.

They had some problems with getting it to work because the write operations interfered with read operations, but they fixed that now, yay!

Theres meant to be more on this at ISSCC actually *goes and looks*

**fooster** · 02-07-2006

Magnets eventually lose their electricity as we also have to pay attention to the fact that this might not even make it to the market due to the fact that ddr and rambus companies will most likely have something to counter this.

However, good find and I hope this will find its way to perhaps the playstation 4 system.

**jesusmcrighteous** · 02-08-2006

I remember reading an MIT magazine article on this a while back. One of the things I think is cool about MRAM is that it does not need electricity to hold its data. Consequently, you can leave data on the RAM when your computer is shut off (as opposed to windows' "sleep" mode, which uses electricity to keep data in the RAM).

That potentially means no more OS boot times! Of course, thats assuming your OS of choice is stable enough to not require frequent rebooting in the first place...