Intel PRAM to sample within next few months

Posted on Wednesday, March 07 2007 @ 1:59 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
EE Times reports Intel will start sampling 90nm 128Mbit phase change memory in the first half of this year, while mass production is slated for the end of this year.
Brian Harrison, vice president of flash memory group at Intel and Ed Doller, chief technology officer of the flash memory group, revealed the move at meeting for analysts and press held in California Tuesday (March 6).

Intel has been a licensee of chalcogenide-based phase change memory technology from Ovonyx Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices Inc. (Rochester Hills, Mich.), since about 2000 as it has researched the technology

Intel Corp. and STMicroelectronics NV announced they had teamed up their research on chalcogenide-based phase-change memory as a likely successor to flash as a non-volatile memory, in June 2006. Interest in phase-change memory is increasing as there are concerns that flash memory may struggle to scale. Qimonda AG, formerly the memory operation of Infineon Tecnologies AG, is researching a phase-change memory technology with IBM Corp. and Macronix of Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Doller told the meeting that the 128-Mbit had demonstrated 100,000,000 cycles endurance and much greater than 10 years data retention. "The phase change memory gets pretty close to Nirvana," Doller said.


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Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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