Intel Doubles Capacity of Likely Flash Successor

Intel has announced a new technique that allows them to effectively double the storage capacity of a single phase-change memory cell without adding cost to the current fabrication process. "Phase-change memory differs from other solid-state memory technologies such as flash and random-access memory because it doesn't use electrons to store data. Instead, it relies on the material's own arrangement of atoms, known as its physical state. Previously, phase-change memory was designed to take advantage of only two states: one in which atoms are loosely organized (amorphous), and another where they are rigidly structured (crystalline). But in a paper presented at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, researchers illustrated that there are two more distinct states that fall between amorphous and crystalline, and that these states can be used to store data."

Comments

Re:Two Billion Transistors on Their Latest Chip

[SirLoadALot]

No, processor caches are made out of SRAM, which is very fast but takes a lot of silicon space. Flash and phase-change RAM are totally different technologies. They aren't intended to be as fast as SRAM, but they are non-volatile, storing their contents without power. Phase-change or a similar technology may end up giving DRAM a run for its money if it gets fast enough, but I've never heard of an alternative to SRAM for internal processor caches.

Re:Only Double?

[nonsequitor]

It's double the number of bits. If you look at the largest value a 16 bit number or a 32 bit number can store, its not "double" in size. When it comes down to it, they're just bits, how you use them is up to you.

Re:Only Double?

[SirLoadALot]

Currently the phase change RAM can only store 1 bit per element, in two possible states -- 0 or 1. They are changing this four possible states, which corresponds to two bits -- 00, 01, 10, 11. Hence, the amount of data that can be stored is doubled. The number of bits held per element increases by one every time the number of possible states is doubled.

Re:Only Double?

[wizardforce]

Now, if you are using binary storage, and each bit stores 1 of 2 values, then you have the possibilities of: 00,01,10,11. Which is 4 different values. Now if you have 4 states for each bit (which I guess wouldn't, by definition, be a bit anymore), then you have 00,01,02,03,10,11,12,13,20,21,22,23,30,31,32,33. So, you have have squared the amount of information you can store.

simply put, no. 1 bit can either be 0 or 1 *not* 00, 01, 10, 11, that would be TWO bits. doubling the number of combos for one "bit" would likely be stored as 00,01,10,11 although what you're actually doing here is storing 0001 and 1011 together hence two "bits" of info can be stored per unit in a 4 state system.

Long time in the lab

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Even when a technology becomes shippable it tends to take quite a while for it to catch on. It is easy to make small lab batches, but reliable low-cost high-volume production takes a lot longer. NAND flash was invented in 1988 but only really got going in around 2003 - 15 years later.

Re:No longer binary?

[disassembled]

Will we now have computers that do base 4 arithemetic rather than base 2? A base-4 digit is the same as two base-2 digits, information-wise, so it doesn't really matter how the information is stored. If you want to store a byte in some piece of hardware, you can store it as 4 base-4 values or 8 base-2 values, and it'll all look the same to the CPU.

Re:Salt shaker please

[Microlith]

as long as flash keeps getting bigger and cheaper we won't see it's 'Successor' for a while.

As I understand it, flash (nand) capacity grows with the shrinking of the trace size. It's also cheap because it's produced in mass quantities.

Everything that has made flash high capacity and cheap can be applied to PCM, only PCM has a number of advantages:
- more durable, since it doesn't force high voltages over blocks to erase them
- smaller cells, allowing more to be packed in the same space
- rewriteability. You don't have to erase a block to change a single byte. It's more like RAM or hard disks in that respect.

So what will likely happen is a slow change from FLASH to PCM as the major flash manufacturers transition their products to this technology. It'll still have the same form factor, and most people won't notice aside from an increase in capacity.

IANAPCMEBIWNS (I am not a pcm expert but I work near some...)

I didn't know Silverlight HAD storage capacity!

[ZombieRoboNinja]

N/T

Re:Two Billion Transistors on Their Latest Chip

[compro01]

I've never heard of an alternative to SRAM for internal processor caches. AMD seems to be taking interest in Z-RAM for that purpose.

http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196601127