
IBM develops 'instantaneous' memory, 100x faster than flash - alvivar
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/30/embargo-ibm-develops-instantaneous-memory-100x-faster-than-fl/
======
rkalla
Whenever I see announcements like this, I try and cap my enthusiasm -- I think
reading about solid-state-drives in the 90s and not getting them until... well
the last 2 years, I have learned to be cautious with falling in love.

THAT being said, this article suggests mass-production on a timeline of
5-years (give or take) along side other innovations like Intel's 50Gbps
Thunderbolt.next() [1]

I'm really gunning for the world not ending Dec 2012 now; I want to see this
stuff in a desktop PC ;)

Aside: It is fun to think about what changes to current industries would occur
when computing power becomes insignificant -- for example, video
editing/production, video games, voice recognition, security, etc.

Just in our industry, with the cost of a GB dropping to damn near $0.00, the
first thing we saw was an explosion of apps dealing with huge data sets --
something previously only done by a few select mega-corps.

Anyone, just speculation and fun at this point.

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/29/intel-touts-50gbps-
interc...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/29/intel-touts-50gbps-interconnect-
by-2015-will-make-it-work-with/)

~~~
rlpb
There isn't a business case for getting new technologies in mass production so
quickly.

Businesses price to maximise profits, which isn't necessarily anything to do
with production cost. It's more profitable to sell at a high price to early
adopters first, and then gradually bring the price down.

~~~
lucasjung
If a technology is truly revolutionary, then there is most certainly a
business case for putting it into mass production quickly. If you can disrupt
an old industry or technology and replace it en masse with your new product,
you will achieve market dominance in the new market. On the other hand, if you
phase your product in slowly from the high end, your competitors will have
time to copy you and grow their market share apace with yours.

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InclinedPlane
Faster than flash, much higher write-cycle lifetime than even SLC flash, if
these hold up in mass production it'll be like christmas for everyone.

~~~
zquestz
Even if they are expensive, everyone will want these. I know I will be first
in line. If these are reliable, and their drift friendly modulation works, we
probably won't see spinning disks in 10 years. Thats a great future.

~~~
aidenn0
I disagree. If they cost 4x as much as flash, then nobody will use them unless
the performance improvement is huge (Remember, it's 100x write _latency_ not
throughput, and caching fixes latency problems quite nicely).

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Joakal
To differentiate it from RAM, the word is PRAM.

More:
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Phase_change_...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Phase_change_memory)

~~~
r00fus
Looks like this is the only pram you can buy right now:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=pram&tbm=shop](http://www.google.com/search?q=pram&tbm=shop)

~~~
keenerd
It is easy to buy. I think I've some sitting around unused just because it is
so neat.

[http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&...](http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=NP5Q128A13ESFC0E-ND)

[http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&...](http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=NP8P128A13BSM60E-ND)

------
DharmaSoldat
It will certainly be interesting to see what happens with technology like this
when it gets combined with others such as graphene, memristors, etc.

I agree with rkalla that tempering one's hopes towards it is probably the way
to go, but it's always nice to see someone pushing the envelope.

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jacques_chester
I would have preferred a straight-bat presentation, rather than the strained
hangover jokes.

~~~
mapleoin
There's a big button with the words _Press_ and _Release_ on it.

~~~
hugh3
Maybe, but the journalist's job is to take the press release and make it
_better_ , not worse.

If you ask me, the most interesting question is "So how does this thing
actually work?" And the answer according to engadget is "PCM is based on a
special alloy that can be nudged into different physical states, or phases, by
controlled bursts of electricity", or in other words "Fuck, I don't know, I
didn't really understand the press release"

The press release is more informative. You put some undisclosed material
between two electrodes. The material can be crystalline or amorphous, and you
can tell which it is at any given time by the resistance. To change it from
one to the other you simply heat it up with a voltage pulse to one threshold
temperature or another. Neato!

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ajays
Wasn't IBM also responsible for bringing the Giant Magneto-resistive (GMR)
technology to the spinning disk drives, thereby increasing their capacity
many-fold? It looks like they'll do the same to flash with this PCM memory.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

PS: Did anyone else notice the gratuitous mention of "cloud computing" in the
press release? :-D

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stupidhurts
incidentally, does anyone know how close memristor cells are to mass
production?

~~~
juiceandjuice
I saw a talk last week that said 3 years. Supposedly HP is in talks with Hynix
currently.

~~~
warfangle
Is there video of the talk available?

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zwieback
Aren't the wear-out numbers for flash understated? I seem to remember that the
flash I've worked with is in the tens to hundred thousand cycles already but
maybe that's not what's in consumer products?

Also would be interesting hear about power consumption for read and write.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Flash used to last much longer. But flash these days is used in MP3 players
etc. I would imagine the average number of writes is something like .... 1.
Because when my boys fill up a gadget, they buy a bigger gadget. Like most
folks.

Even an SSD drive used as a system volume gets written maybe 1 time. SUre some
blocks get thrashed, but wear-leveling means they write different blocks. So
an mtbf of a dozen would probably serve.

~~~
weaksauce
If you only use it for system volumes it will still get written to multiple
times with os upgrades, security fixes, and atime modifications. If you don't
pull out the page/swap file/hibernate file you are going to be writing those
often as well.

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maeon3
Now the bottleneck will be the CPU in a huge way. Intel we need a few orders
of magnitude faster processors now!

~~~
tobylane
Nope, northbridge/southbridge will be the bottleneck. They currently run at
half the speed of RAM, 400-700mhz. Cycle speed at least, throughput is good.

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jvandenbroeck
It's time to buy some IBM shares

