IBM Bullish on Phase-Change Memory

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Over at SearchStorage, Andrew Burton writes that IBM is bullish on phase-change memory and is betting that it will get out of the gate sooner than memristors and racetrack memory technologies.

In terms of characteristics, memristors are thought to be an eventual replacement for NAND flash memory due to their potentially better scalability and performance,” said Haris Pozidis, a leading PCM researcher from IBM’s Zurich laboratory. “However, their limited capability for multi-level cell storage might limit their price competitiveness in cost per [gigabyte]. Racetrack memory, on the other hand, has the potential to serve as universal memory, as it promises both fast switching and extremely high capacity. However, fundamental issues need to be resolved to realize the high-capacity promise of racetrack memory, having to do with the physics of magnetic domain wall movement.”

Pozidis expects that PCM will bridge the latency and endurance gap between fast/volatile/expensive main-memory (DRAM) and slow/non-volatile/cheap storage (NAND flash) today. Read the Full Story.