Matrix 3D memory is World's Smallest

nokiator writes "Most of the headlines about cool new high density memory technology are from DRAM or Flash manufacturers these days. Matrix Semiconductor, a small Silicon Valley start-up, broke the trend today and announced that the world's smallest 1-Gbit memory chip. Matrix's chip is an antifuse-based one-time programmable ROM. The total die area of the 1Gb chip is 31 square millimeters (smaller than the blue/red pills in the Matrix movie). Matrix claims that they can achieve this density through a proprietary 3D circuit technology that combines 150nm and 130nm process geometries. When Matrix moves to 90nm process technology, it should be possible to manufacture a 8Gb memory chip on a reasonable sized (i.e. cheap) die. There are many potential applications of this kind of low cost, very high density ROM technology, mostly in content distribution area. One 8Gb ROM chip would have sufficient storage capacity to store the contents of an entire movie using H.264 encoding."

Comments

Re:Now, with an infinitely redundant power supply

[AKAImBatman]

I can ramdisk the internet.

Except for the fact that this is ROM. It makes use of antifuse technolgy which works a lot like fuse technology. The idea in fuse technology is that you blow the pathways you don't want, thus creating the circut. With antifuse technology, the fuses don't normally conduct electricity so you have to blow the fuse to create pathways.

Info

Density is fine, but speed ?

[karvind]

What is the latency of this memory module ?

Secondly it is antifuse-based one-time programmable ROM. It is NOT a flash which can be re-written 100,000 times. So it is more useful for storing application code but not for data storage etc.

Antifuse base memories are diode like and can be much smaller than regular FLASH memories. But these are inherently slower and also don't have any gain element (like transistor). This requires careful design to achieve good signal-to-noise ration for memory read operation

More aggressive 3D technology was demonstrated by IBM last year where they have circuits in 3D.

A startup R-cube logic is also designing 3D microprocessor where memory is put on top of the logic core to reduce latency.

Xanoptics is more into hybrid design (mixed analog, RF, optics) on a single footprint.

Re:Sweet!

[Short Circuit]

A CD/DVD's data area is around 10,000mm^2. That's enough area for 343 of these chips at their current size. 343*128MB=42.875GB

A better arrangement would be to make a 5" (127mm) square cartridge to fit in the same stackable region as a 5" circle. That gives you 520 of these chips. 520*128MB=65GB, which is better than Blu-Ray, and nowhere near as fragile.

And that's on their current process, which is apparently a blend of 130nm and 150nm. Wait until they shrink that down a bit.

Data density in the world has just gone up.