Swad Posted July 10, 2006 Share Posted July 10, 2006 With the increasing use of flash memory in everyday devices, it seems like the days of the venerable hard drive may be coming quickly to a close. This is especially true with Freescale's (remember them?) announcement of commercial availablity (read: real world) of "magnetoresistive random-access memory" or MRAM. Sometimes referred to as "universal" memory, MRAM could displace a number of chips found in every electronic device, from PCs, cell phones, music players and cameras to the computing components of kitchen appliances, cars and airplanes. "This is the most significant memory introduction in this decade," said Will Strauss, an analyst with research firm Forward Concepts. "This is radically new technology. People have been dabbling in this for years, but nobody has been able to make it in volume." Electronic memory is ubiquitous in today's world, but each flavor of memory-chip technology has different strengths and weaknesses. Often times, a single device has multiple types of memory chips to take advantage of the benefits of a particular technology. Static and dynamic random access memory chips, used in PCs and elsewhere, are fast but lose data when the power is switched off. Flash memory chips, which are commonly found in music players, cameras and cell phones, retain information but are slower and degrade over time. Anyone else excited to see this in a MacBook with an 8 hour battery life? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John the Geek Posted July 11, 2006 Share Posted July 11, 2006 Anyone else excited to see this in a MacBook with an 8 hour battery life? And that boots up in 3.7 seconds.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swad Posted July 11, 2006 Author Share Posted July 11, 2006 Good call. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bwhsh8r Posted July 11, 2006 Share Posted July 11, 2006 Thatll be great, i hope that they succede! that is a great idea....... max Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xtraa Posted July 11, 2006 Share Posted July 11, 2006 Sounds really good, but unfortunately it is not that easy 512 kByte (organised @ 256 k * 16 bit) capacity makes it unattractive for main usage yet. Also, the power needs of 10 mA at standby and 100 mA while writing is not that attractive. And the price of 25 USD each... So, the main problems by now are the price and capacity deficites, that pushes it far away from a HD replacement. Ok, 35 nsec access time is pretty fast, but it will be a long way until it will reach the todays memory burst transfer rates. But it is not all that negative I mean it would be a very good replacement for RAM, because of instant on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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