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flipnap
07-11-2006, 04:28 AM
DALLAS - 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.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060710/ap_on_hi_te/magnetic_memory
Fredl
07-11-2006, 06:04 AM
Magnetic memory is about 10x slower than regular RAM, so you'll still need the usual RAM and a hard drive inside your computer for a long time yet.

It's use will be in devices that currently use Flash memory. Mostly portable things.
ThomasMahler
07-11-2006, 07:12 AM
Magnetic memory is about 10x slower than regular RAM, so you'll still need the usual RAM and a hard drive inside your computer for a long time yet.

It's use will be in devices that currently use Flash memory. Mostly portable things.

The RAM is capable of read/write times of only 35-nanoseconds as opposed to 50-70-ns offered by DRAM.
Fredl
07-11-2006, 07:56 AM
The RAM is capable of read/write times of only 35-nanoseconds as opposed to 50-70-ns offered by DRAM.

OK. It was an Ars article I was reading that made it look 10x slower.

"and for devices organized as 16-bit words I found access times (read cycle) in the 50ns to 90ns range. This makes the new 35ns MRAM part quite a bit faster than current NAND flash. However, it's nowhere near the 3ns to 5ns access time of DDR2 DRAM; 35ns is more on the order of old EDO SDRAM."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060710-7224.html

Maybe the new RAM will be used in iPods and mini-laptops.
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