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

[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:Freescale's PR

[Phreakiture]

I believe that this is an example of coming full circle