Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday March 07 2019, @06:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the big-and-fast dept.

Samsung Ships First Commercial Embedded MRAM (eMRAM) Product

Samsung today announced that it has started mass production of its first commercial embedded Magnetic Random Access Memory (eMRAM). Made using its 28FDS (28nm FD-SOI[*]) process technology, the eMRAM module promises to offer higher performance and endurance when compared to eFlash. Furthermore it can be integrated into existing chips, according to the manufacturer.

[...] MRAM is one of the highest-performing and most durable non-volatile memory technologies [that] currently exists. Because its eMRAM does not require an erase cycle before writing data, it is 1,000 times faster than eFlash, Samsung says. It also uses lower voltages when compared to eFlash, and therefore consumes around 1/400th the energy during writing process, according to the maker.

On the flip side, however, MRAM's density and capacity both fall far short of 3D XPoint, DRAM, and NAND flash, which greatly reduces its addressable markets. Samsung is not formally disclosing the capacity of its new eMRAM module; the company is only saying that it yet has to tape out a 1 Gb eMRAM chip in 2019, which strongly suggests that the current offering has a lower capacity.

[*] FD-SOI: Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator.

Related: Everspin Announces New MRAM Products


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday March 07 2019, @07:38PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 07 2019, @07:38PM (#811305) Journal

    Only 1 GB might seem limiting. But it may be very useful for applications like microcontrollers.

    Once upon a time we used to dream of our biggest computers having as much memory, storage and cpu power as our smallest computers currently have.

    . . . and dreamed of dancing on Microsoft's grave

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 07 2019, @07:50PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday March 07 2019, @07:50PM (#811312) Journal

    1 Gb = 128 MB, although maybe they could be stacked.

    This comment on AnandTech seemed like a reasonable explanation:

    >Usually the more i think about newer tech like this the more use cases i come up with, im really struggling to do that here though.

    It is a replacement for embedded flash and especially embedded NOR flash, which is in almost every embedded device. Huge market for this stuff, just not thing you are likely to be aware of.

    >Sure there are some very specific industrial cases where writes are through the roof but data sizes are small, but in a world where 3D XPoint is going to enter 2nd generation soon and will likely continue to scale well moving forward.

    XPoint cannot be used for these applications due to fabrication requirements. The alternative is usually NOR, which is really expensive and not scaling well to newer nodes.

    Universal memory [wikipedia.org] remains a distant dream. 3D XPoint doesn't measure up, Crossbar RRAM is vaporware, and everything else is vaporware or hasn't made it to market yet. The death of NAND was greatly postponed with 3D layers and TLC/QLC, although the latter necessitates a large cache to maintain good performance.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @02:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @02:04PM (#811525)

      1 Gb = 128 MB

      Definitely beats an LS-120 drive with merely 120 MB. And probably is much faster, too.