There’s never a shortage of new experimental forms of memory — but a company called Crossbar has now worked up something called resistive RAM which could wipe the floor with NAND.
At half the size of conventional NAND RAM but with 20 times faster write speeds — around 140MB/s — this stuff really means business. It also uses 20 times less power, last 10 times as long, and reads data at 17MB/s. Its 3D structure also provides it with impressive data density, too: one 200mm2 chip apparently provides upwards of 1TB of storage. It’s not exactly a fair fight.
The new style of RAM, which is just about ready to find its way into devices, uses a three-layer structure that can be stacked in three dimensions, but can be manufactured in a standard chip factory. More than that, it’s claimed it can even be made using existing production infrastructure.
The new RAM will first roll out in embedded SoCs — though Crossbar is the exclusive holder of RRAM patents, so it’s not clear how cheap it’ll be. Fingers crossed it proves affordable. [Crossbar via VentureBeat via Engadget]