Melting Memory Chips In Mass Production

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday September 28, 2009 @10:30AM from the what-took-you-so-long dept.

chill writes "Nature is reporting that 'South Korean manufacturer Samsung Electronics announced this week that it has begun mass production of a new kind of memory chip that stores information by melting and freezing tiny crystals. Known as phase-change memory (PCM), the idea was first proposed by physicists in the 1960s.' With transistor-equivalent cells only 20 nm wide, switching time is around 16 ns. The first target market is cell phones, but the companies behind the technology see applications in PCs, servers, and other devices as well."

1 of 117 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

And What About... by Nemyst · 2009-09-28 10:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

The new chips' lifetime? The impacts on overall computer heat? The energy required to use such memory? What is the expected RAM size to be available at first?

The article looks very scarce on details other than the technology itself which, honestly, doesn't say much about the final product at all.