MRAM in 2004?

amberspry writes "As previously reported here and here. Wired has yet another update on MRAM here. They give hope by mid-2004 we will see devices with faster boot up times and using less power as a 'vastly accelerated timetable is being implemented.' Gotta love joint ventures."

Comments

Magnetic memory?

[Sheetrock]

I'm sure there probably isn't anything to worry about, but isn't there a chance of problems if you put magnetic things near storage media?

Re:Magnetic memory?

[tomstdenis]

I don't think the field is that big.

Besides any conductor with a current generates a magnetic field.... [well there are probably exceptions... I'm not an EE or PHYS dude].

I think the MRAM guys are talking way small scale here :-)

tom

can't wait

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

I can't wait till this technology can permanantly remember data. AND it gets cheap enough to replace the spinning hard drive. Speeding up the memory read/write times and reducing the memory bottleneck could effect your pc much more than upgrading from a 1.8 ghz to a 2.0 ghz processor.

I'm not sure how accurate this statement is.

[Prince_Ali]

"How many people keep their computer on 24 hours a day simply because they can't stand to sit around for four or five minutes waiting for it to boot up?" he asked. "I don't think anyone has researched that particular issue, but I'll bet there are a lot of them.

Most people will just grab a beverage or something during the minute (or less) it takes most PCs to startup. I would think most of the people who keep their PCs on 24/7 do it for P2P or [Seti|Folding]@home or possibly to prevent wear and tear on the hard drive (spinning up the hard drive wears it down faster than anything).

Re:I'm not sure how accurate this statement is.

[nosilA]

It's not the short amount of time it takes to boot up, but the amount of time it takes to log in, start various applications, connect to various computers, etc. That's all interactive and a big pain. Unfortunately, this wouldn't keep me from having to log back into all of the various ssh sessions I have open, but it would help somewhat.

Faster startup times? Whatever...

[Plasmic]

From the article:

faster startup times for computers, PDAs and cell phones

Clearly, my computer will startup no faster than it does when coming out of Standby mode (which stores the state of my computer in RAM, but requires that the PC remain plugged in). So, what do I gain? Basically, we get Standby mode that works even when you unplug the computer. And, that's still no improvement to the "startup time".

So, who needs their cell phone or PDA to startup faster? Most of these devices are pulling straight from some flavor of RAM during startup, already.

How often do you reset your iPaq? Just when it crashes, and it only takes 5 seconds, anyhow.

What about that annoying startup time on your cell phone? Let's see, only when the battery falls out do I ever exercise that feature.

If MRAM is really 6 times faster than today's static RAM, that's wonderful, but it will have little impact on startup times (see Hard Drive I/O-blocking).

Re:Faster startup times? Whatever...

[Ed Avis]

I don't think you're seeing the big picture. If MRAM can store data persistently, that means no more need for a hard disk (backups happen over the network). A big cause of failure, noise and expense is cut out immediately, at least for systems that don't need to store large amounts of data locally.

You could just boot the machine from a Knoppix CD - or the equivalent for Windows - and save your files into MRAM. This assumes MRAM can mature to the point where it is no more unreliable than a hard disk, which shouldn't be too difficult.

Motorola

[chia_monkey]

I don't want to sound too cynical here, but I just can't seem to get so excited about Motorola working on new innovative technology and continuing on with it. I remember when Motorola phones were the way to go. Even more dramatic an example though is the whole PPC chip. There was once a time the chips they produced for the Macs were just slightly slower than Intel's chips (in terms of MHz...but we all know that doesn't really matter for true performance). But then they seemed to take naps that lasted for years while AMD and Intel kept improving chip speed and performance. Sure...Motorola may be working on this now, but from what we've seen in the past, I wouldn't be surprised to see them resting on their laurels and letting the world pass them by yet again.