Core memories come back from the dead

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () bsf-llc com>]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115249171304801944.html?mod=technology_main_
whats_news
 
  

Freescale Brings Chip to Market Based on Magnetic Technology

By DON CLARK
July 10, 2006; Page B8


Freescale  <http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=fsl>
Semiconductor Inc. is claiming victory in a decades-old race to
commercialize a radical change in memory-chip technology.

The Austin, Texas, company, spun off from Motorola
<http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=mot>  Inc. in 2004,
today plans to begin selling chips called MRAMs, which use magnetic
technology to store data. MRAMs are one of several proposed candidates for a
kind of universal memory, able to perform chores that now require three
different kinds of chips.

Large and small companies have struggled for years to perfect the
technology. Some, such as Cypress
<http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=CY> Semiconductor
Corp., wound up giving up on MRAMs.

"If Freescale is shipping a commercial product, they deserve congratulations
for a technical breakthrough," said T.J. Rodgers, Cypress's chief executive
officer.

For now, Freescale is targeting a narrow slice of the memory-chip market,
which totals more than $50 billion a year. The company's MRAMs now lack the
storage capacity and low prices needed for mass-market applications such as
storing data in personal computers and cellphones, and Freescale isn't ready
to say they ever will.

...

 

The chips are made by combining conventional silicon with materials that are
permanently magnetized. While other chips store data as electrical charges,
MRAMs store data by manipulating changes in magnetic states and the
resistance to the flow of current through the chip.

Freescale's first MRAMs, which carry a suggested price of $25 each, store
just four megabits of data. By contrast, DRAMs that store 512 megabits of
data now cost only about $5. But MRAMs can read and write data in cycles of
about 35 billionths of a second. That is much faster than DRAMs and
competitive with some SRAMs, said Bob Merritt, an analyst at Semico Research
Corp., a Phoenix market-research firm.

Mr. Sadana said the combination of features would be attractive in
applications where speed and permanent data storage are needed, including
components of server systems, networking and data-storage devices,
home-security systems and computer printers. Some such products now combine
a battery and an SRAM; with MRAMs, a battery wouldn't be needed, he said.

...

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