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

Freescale's PR

[austinpoet]

Information about the product from the Freescale Press Release

Re:Freescale's PR

[Phreakiture]

I believe that this is an example of coming full circle

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

[TransEurope]

_Today_ they are larger. But tomorrow Freescale

plans to shrink their new chips (29nm) under the

scales of the future standard 6T-SRAMs (still 45nm).

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/75243

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:Is bootup time really that big of an issue?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Instapr0n(tm)

Slow Bubbles

[Doc Ruby]

I've been hearing about these kinds of devices since "bubble memory.

Why can't I get a motherboard with 500MB Flash for storing an image of system memory exactly after the OS is loaded and initialized, that is blitted over to RAM and then tweaked (system clock, network counters, etc) in a few milliseconds? All the "loading" from storage to RAM includes minutes of computation like a second "compilation" that's practically identical every time I start the machine. How much computing power is wasted on that redundant exercise every day, around the world? I'd like to reinit only when the startup becomes corrupt, which a "known good" ROM instance could avoid better than the current chaotic process.