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Advance In PCM Memory Could Dramatically Reduce Power Consumption
Zothecula writes "Researchers from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the University of Illinois have developed new low-power digital memory which uses much less power and is faster than other solutions currently available. The breakthrough could give future consumer devices like smartphones and laptops a much longer battery life, but might also benefit equipment used in telecommunications, science or by the military."
uses much less power and is faster than other solutions currently available
Haven't seen however any info on the speed.
Unless I'm reading it wrong -- and the wording is a bit ambiguous -- they seem to be claiming speeds higher than other PCM implementations, not DRAM. I would be very surprised if the write speed of phase-change memory could ever exceed that of DRAM, and I say write speed because phase-change devices can be read faster than they can be written.
PCM is much more likely to be a SSD solution than a replacement for main memory, and even then, it's a long, long way from leaving the lab. All this announcement concerns is a proof-of-concept.