'Universal' memory chip ready for market (AP/CNN) {Magnetic RAM}

Monday, July 10, 2006; Posted: 10:15 a.m. EDT (14:15 GMT)

DALLAS, Texas (AP) -- Achieving a long-sought goal of the $48 billion memory chip industry, Freescale Semiconductor Inc. announced the commercial availability of a chip that combines traditional memory's endurance with a hard drive's ability to keep data while powered down.

The chips, called magnetoresistive random-access memory or MRAM, maintain information by relying on magnetic properties rather than an electrical charge. Unlike flash memory, which also can keep data without power, MRAM is fast to read and write bits, and doesn't degrade over time.

Freescale, which was spun off of Motorola Inc. in July 2004, said Monday it has been producing the 4-megabit MRAM chips at an Arizona factory for two months to build inventory. A number of chip makers have been pursuing the technology for a decade or more, including IBM Corp.
***
"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."
***
more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/07/10/magnetic.memory.ap/index.html

At 1/2Mbyte, it's certainly not the densest RAM in the world,
but it's still interesting to know that it now functions at all
on a large scale.

It's also interesting to note that magnetic core memory,
unlike disco, obviously isn't dead, just morphed.

Tesha

http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=880030&highlight=

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 10, 2006--The first
commercial Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (MRAM) device is now
in volume production and available from Freescale Semiconductor
(NYSE:FSL) (NYSE:FSL.B).

Freescale's four megabit (Mbit) MRAM product is a fast,
non-volatile memory with unlimited endurance - a combination of
characteristics not available in any other individual semiconductor
memory product. The device is built on a foundation of technology
protected by more than 100 Freescale patents, including toggle-bit
switching.

"With the commercialization of MRAM, Freescale is the
first-to-market with a technology of tremendous possibilities and
profound implications," said Bob Merritt, Semico Research.
"Competition to become the first company to market MRAM technology was
fierce. This is a significant achievement that certainly confirms the
dedication of Freescale's engineering team."

MRAM uses magnetic materials combined with conventional silicon
circuitry to deliver the speed of SRAM with the non-volatility of
Flash in a single, high endurance device. Freescale's successful
commercialization of this technology could hasten new classes of
electronic products offering dramatic advances in size, cost, power
consumption and system performance.

"The commercial launch of the industry's first MRAM product is a
major milestone made possible by the pioneering research of Freescale
technologists. It underscores our commitment to deliver breakthrough
technology to our customers to address real-world challenges," said
Sumit Sadana, senior vice president, Strategy and Business
Development, and Chief Technology Officer, Freescale. "The unique
capabilities of MRAM technology have numerous exciting applications in
our target markets."

Freescale's first commercial MRAM product, called the MR2A16A, is
appropriate for a variety of commercial applications such as
networking, security, data storage, gaming and printers. The part is
engineered to be a reliable, economical, single-component replacement
for battery-backed SRAM units. The device also could be used in cache
buffers, configuration storage memories and other applications that
require the speed, endurance and non-volatility of MRAM.

About the MR2A16A

The MR2A16A is a commercial temperature range, 3.3 volt device
featuring 35 nanosecond read and write cycle times. It is an
asynchronous memory organized as 256K words by 16 bits. An industry
standard SRAM pinout arrangement allows for system design flexibility
without bus contention. The device is housed in a 400 mil TSOP type-II
RoHS package. It is manufactured at Freescale's 200 millimeter
Chandler Fab in Arizona.

Availability

The MR2A16A MRAM is available now from Freescale
(www.freescale.com) and selected distributors.

About Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (NYSE:FSL, FSL.B) is a global leader
in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the
automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets.
Freescale became a publicly traded company in July 2004 after more
than 50 years as part of Motorola, Inc. The company is based in
Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing
or sales operations in more than 30 countries. Freescale, a member of
the S&P 500(R), is one of the world's largest semiconductor companies
with 2005 sales of $5.8 billion (USD). <a href="http://www.freescale.com">www.freescale.com</a>

Freescale (TM) and the Freescale logo are trademarks of Freescale
Semiconductor, Inc. All other product or service names are the
property of their respective owners. (C) Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.
2006

then we are about to see a major technological change. Of course it will take a while to be of the scale to replace anything major, but the harddrive is the weakest part in your computer. There are many businesses that make a living just providing backups and failsafes for that. Imagine if the harddrive goes away and is failsafe.

So backups would still be with us, they'd just take seconds/gigabyte.

Unfortunately, a Trojan horse attack which erases your data would see the same speedup...

Hard disks are popular only because of there very high storage density. Flash memory is faster, uses less power, non-volatile and in fact superior in almost every way except for storage density.

If this thing has storage densities that are close to hard disks it will start to replace them because of the speed advantage.

For years I've been expecting some kind of solid state replacement for hard drives. This may be the technology that does it.

This could also eventually replace CDs DVDs, etc.

At a low level....lower power consumption....hard disks eat up the juice.

waaaayyyyyy kewl...

The idea that we trusted our precious data to mechanical, spinning platters will be a source of great laughter in the future.

MRAM will bring about the keychain library. Everything you want access to - not only your personal info, but your books, music, films, all the information and media that define you - will be portable, indestructible, and in your pocket.

Peace.