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Motorola Mocks-up MRAM
zakath writes "EETimes.com has an article on Motorola's successful presentation of 256-kilobit MRAM at ISSCC this week (Instant-on PCs anyone?). While they're still far from commercial production (2004 is their target) its nice to see some progress being made. Please tell me RAMBUS has no patents for this tech..."
I see a lot of posters here saying that "If they double their capacity every x months, that's only 8MB in 4 years" or something...
When working on a new technology, having a 256kbit chip is just as useful as a 256mbit chip, when all you're doing is proving the technology out. They have no reason to be trying to produce massive dies yet, because all that will do is reduce their yields... and when they're making one-off runs of these to test them, that's a killer.
I'm certain that by the time they go into production, the capacity will be impressive.
However, I don't think one would need to save the entire state of system memory for this to be useful. Aside from embedded systems, consider the possibility of an OS that uses a proper swap system and just makes sure the entire physical memory is written to swap when the system suspends. If the MRAM is sufficient to keep the core kernel state and information about the swap pages, your restart would just need to flag all the physical memory as free pages, with everything currently swapped out. Sure it wouldn't be "instant on", but it would be far closer than I've seen to date.
On the flip side, you could probably do something similar with Linux by putting in a boot patch that checks the swap space for a signature indicating it should reload the memory from the swap space instead of going through a full boot process. You'd still have the usual issues of needing to reset hardware, but it would probably be faster than a full boot.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Solid state, eh? I can FINALLY get rid of that vacuum tube ram... man my power bill will go so far down.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Fact is that when you make a hole, and then secure it by hiding it, somebody will stumble across it. Once that happens, you're out of luck because it becomes hard as hell to fix it because you can't just give users something easy to patch the system with.
I seriously suspect that you are shooting for low karma or work for M$. Either way, you qualify as a troll. One down-mod coming up!
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
SIG: HUP
If you just suspend the PC when you turn it off, then it never gets a reboot. This would require an OS that can sustain long uptimes.
Since by the time this technology is released, Linux and friends won't be among the OSes that are legal to use and officially sanctioned, this technology make PC's worse, increasing the number of crashes, due to the lack of regular reboots that naturally occur when the user turns off the PC.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
8 megs of non-volatile RAM?
That's plenty for a kernal.
Take a look at EROS (www.eros-os.org)
I could see hitting the power key, and immediately getting a system that was up (i.e. the thread scheduler running, and processes getting their time slices), but in effect had everything paged out.
What I'm curious about, is how much power this can save and what the memory cycle times look like.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Routers, print servers, calculators, game consoles, cars, traffic signal equipment, space shuttle, ISS, cellular phones, and I'm sure there are other uses.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
How much juice does it take to keep your standar PCs memory refreshed? If you turn down the refresh rate to absolute minimum and perhaps stagger the refreshes to keep current constant, how long could an embedded battery keep say 128MB alive?
Ihave no idea... but someone has to have an [informed] opinion.
Even presuming that they can double the density every 9 months, they will be making 512kB chips in 2004, their estimated release date. Figure 16 chips per stick and you have 8MB. No where near enough for instant-on PCs (I mean full on OS's with GUIs, not LoaF or PBSD).
Mark Duell
90th POST!
Just in case you're not a troll...
The fact that it's solid state implies it's not as likely to wear out as a hard disk. In fact, they're projecting a ten year lifespan for these things.
As your vacuum tube example shows, the absense of moving parts is not the only important attribute. Capacity and speed are also valuable attributes in memory. MRAM would also have those going for it as well.
But traditionally, non-volatile storage has not been solid state.
there will be much larger capacities available once they get these to the fabrication facilities. However, the articles does not mention cost, so how exactly are we supposed to know if these aren't going to cost $1.50/MB like flash does? And how about making these chips in modules that can be relocated easily? For example, say your MRAM in your old computer will work in your new one? There's got to be a way to have them packaged as little clip-on chips that can be clipped onto a board like wireless PC cards can be clipped into a PCI board... It would save costs big-time. I have plenty of old 72-bit RAM lying around that could be used in newer computers...
But remember, one of Motorola's main markets is embedded systems - they're looking at memory for mobile phones etc initially, so the 2004 date is perhaps not so unrealistic.
Now, if you use a decent OS, like Windows, the kernel can have suitable protection mechanisms, such as security through obscurity. In Linux, a virus knows exactly where to put itself, but in Windows, the kernel is like a maze of twisty little functions, all alike. As you can see, if you're gonna use instant-on technology, you should use a suitable OS.
Also, don't think about MRAM replacing your RAM, think about it replacing your hard drive.
Instant-on PCs anyone
You guys turn your PCs off?