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takyon writes:

In a Dec. 15 presentation at the 2014 International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco, Silicon Valley start-up Crossbar said that it has solved a major hurdle towards commercialization of its 3D/vertical resistive random-access memory (RRAM) product.

While 1TnR enables a single transistor to drive over 2,000 memory cells with very low power, it also experiences leakage of a sneak path current that interferes with the performance and reliability of a typical RRAM array. Crossbar's device solves that leakage problem by utilizing a super linear threshold layer. In that layer, a volatile conduction path is formed at the threshold voltage. This device is the industry's first selector capable of suppressing the leakage current at very small dimensions, and it has been successfully demonstrated in a four-megabit test memory chip.

Crossbar has previously made a number of bold claims about their potential NAND flash replacement: that it can fit 1 terabyte in an area the size of a postage stamp, while allowing 20x faster writes than NAND using 5% as much energy. Crossbar also claims 100,000 write cycles compared to NAND's 3,000-10,000. NAND endurance scaling issues have led Samsung, Hynix, SanDisk and Micron to pursue vertical-NAND in order to boost capacity and prolong endurance. Samsung has already commercialized V-NAND with the 850 EVO and 850 Pro SSD lines. Crossbar expects to produce RRAM for wearable devices starting in 2016, with RRAM-based SSDs appearing 18 months later.

In a related development also presented at IEDM, engineers at Stanford University have built a "four-layer prototype high-rise chip" using carbon nanotube transistors (CNTs) and RRAM. The researchers developed a new technique that transfers CNTs from a quartz growth medium to a silicon wafer using an adhesive metal film, "achieving some of the highest density, highest performance CNTs ever made." They fabricated RRAM layers directly atop each CNT logic layer while drilling thousands of interconnections between the layers.

1. "takyon" - https://soylentnews.org/~takyon/
2. "2014 International Electron Devices Meeting" - http://www.his.com/~iedm/
3. "has solved a major hurdle" - http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/15/crossbar-finds-a-way-to-build-3d-memory-chips-with-high-density/
4. "commercialization" - http://www.computerworld.com/article/2859266/a-terabyte-on-a-postage-stamp-rram-heads-into-commercialization.html
5. "resistive random-access memory" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistive_random-access_memory
6. "a number of bold claims" - http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/08/05/crossbar_uncloaks_fast_tiny_capacious_rram_part/
7. "potential NAND flash replacement" - http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014/07/01/the_end_of_flash_is_nigh/
8. "Samsung, Hynix, SanDisk and Micron" - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/16/3d_nand_flash_of_the_future/
9. "850 EVO" - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/15/samsungs_terabyte_flash_drive_gets_longer_life/
10. "850 Pro" - http://www.anandtech.com/show/8216/samsung-ssd-850-pro-128gb-256gb-1tb-review-enter-the-3d-era
11. "have built a "four-layer prototype high-rise chip"" - http://www.kurzweilai.net/stanford-engineers-invent-radical-high-rise-3d-chips

printed from SoylentNews, Crossbar 3D Resistive RAM Heads to Commercialization on 2024-04-19 02:57:59