A Magnetic Memory Alternative to Hard Disk

Dr Occult writes "Finally, a magnetic memory chip has been manufactured in volume and released by the U.S. company Freescale. Christened MRAM (magnetoresistive random-access memory),this chip will hold information even after power has been switched off. From the BBC news article: 'Unlike flash memory, which also can keep data without power, Mram has faster read and write speeds and does not degrade over time,' and 'MRAM chips could one day be used in PCs to store an operating system, allowing computers to start up faster when switched on.'"

Comments

NOT a hard drive alternative

[dsginter]

MRAM is *not* a hard drive alternative because it needs to be fabricated with traditional chip lithography. Also, MRAM cells are very large, even compared with flash memory.

It would be extremely expensive to create an "MRAM hard drive". This is just more pump and dump for Freescale daytraders.

Re:NOT a hard drive alternative

[rwven]

Seeing as everything in this industry gets cheaper, faster, smaller and all around better with time, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if this ends up being a widely used alternative to flash memory. It may take years, but what doesn't... There has been news of this MRAM floating around for about 5 years now (maybe more?)...it's just finally been produced in force.

Re:NOT a hard drive alternative

[IAmTheDave]

Don't be so cynical - all progress starts with a product like this. Time will see memory capacity become denser, physical space requirements smaller, etc.

Two years ago 40G flash (hell, my 4G USB drive) would have been laughed at. Progress will continue unabated, so let's let MRAM get its foot in the door, and see where it is in a year or two. RAM sans power requirements is a nice place to be.

Re:NOT a hard drive alternative

[morgan_greywolf]

The key isn't even speed, capacity or size ... it's economics. To be a hard drive replacement, it needs to be as cheap as hard drives. Your 4GB USB drive may be 'cheap' in your mind, but if it were as cheap as any current PATA or SATA hard drive, it would have cost $4, not $40-80 ... IOW, your USB drive is at least 10x and as much as 20x more expensive than a hard drive. For MRAM to become a viable replacement for HDDs, it has to become as cheap as HDDs.

Only time will tell if the economies of scale kick in and make this economically viable.

Re:NOT a hard drive alternative

[theStorminMormon]

You seem to be trapped in the current (already outdated?) paradigm of hard drive usage. If I were to put together a high-end machine right now I would certainly throw in at least 2 hard drives. A very small 10RPM drive for the OS, programs, and a much larger (but probably slower) drive for storing all my files.

If you RTFA you'll notice that that's exactly what they mention: using the MRAM to run the OS. So, yeah, it may not work to replace your entire hard drive, but it makes a lot of sense to split hard drive usage between the files you are going to be booting from, accessing constantly, and files you only access when you have a specific need to.

Sure, 4MB is still to small to run an OS on (yeah yeah, except linux, and that's great) - but if you're goal is to get large enough to have a bootable OS and NOT to replace an entire hard drive (especially since hard drive capacity is getting cheaper and cheaper) then I think you start to see the potential of this technology.

-stormin

TV not PC

[ds_job]

I don't want this in my PC to boot my O/S quicker. I want this in my TV / Video / STB / whatever so that I can turn them off at night and not have to wait for ages for them to be reinitialised / scan for frequencies / whatever they actually do when they are turned on. It would also make me not have to reprogram my favourites and display settings, which currently do not survive a power cycle. Get these into modern A/V technology and we can finally do away with the necessity of standby just to speed up watching the TV in the morning.

Re:Freescale's PR

[Phreakiture]

I believe that this is an example of coming full circle