Memory

Phase-change Memory, 1000x Faster Than Flash

Fast memory devices going into the terabit range

By Alexandru Pancescu, Hardware Editor

18th of September 2007, 07:47 GMT

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While NAND flash-based memory chips are very popular these days as they offer pretty high data transferring rates along side medium sized storage capabilities, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania claim that they can do better with a new type of non-volatile memory technology that is more than 1000 times faster than flash chips and can store a given amount of data for 100,000 years. On top of these extraordinary features, the new nanoscale memory technology can also be expanded to store huge amounts of information, going even in the terabit range.

As the flash

memory technology is moving closer to its limits, a number of alternatives exist, but until now, none of them offered a decisive advantage over the older technology in terms of scalability, ease of implementation and price tag. While some alternatives to the flash memory chips are offering great speed improvements, they also are more difficult to construct and are sporting a high production price tag which may scare off most customers.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania came up with another technology that could be used to create better non-volatile memory chips based on phase-change structures. A variant of the phase-change memory, this new technology is mainly based on a nanowire made of germanium antimony telluride, a material that can change its state, going to and from crystalline and amorphous structures. As the two states are coming with different electrical properties, this could be the key to develop a new non-volatile memory.

First tests performed on these new structures revealed that their speed when it comes to data writing, erasing and reading is much better than the speeds achieved on traditional NAND flash memory chips.
Another good point of the nanowires is that they are able to maintain their state for extended periods of time and the news site tegdaily cites Ritesh Agarwal, one of the scientists that worked on that project, saying that the memory device would keep stored data safe even after 100,000 years of use. When combining the fast data transferring properties of this new technology with the ability to store data for long periods of time without alteration or data corruption, it looks like this approach may be the replacement technology for the NAND flash chips when it comes to commercial applications.

This technology is by no means the only one that is developed in an attempt to find a replacement for the NAND based flash memory chips which are fast approaching the limits both in terms of storage capabilities and scaling into devices with higher densities. According to Ritesh Agarwal the new phase-change memory devices may scale even to "terabit-level", while the traditional flash memories are far from reaching that level. The downside of this new approach is mainly its limited availability, as it is still in a very early phase and will not be integrated into commercial applications for some years at least.

TAGS:

phase-change | non-volatile | memory | storage | flash

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