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Top 5 memory trends for 2013
Kristin Lewotsky
1/8/2013 2:17 PM EST
The year ahead should be an interesting one, as wheels set in motion last year propel the sector into the future. Let’s take a quick look at the five technologies and trends that made headlines in 2012 and promise to stay in the spotlight in coming months.
Life beyond PCs
In Q212, for the first time in 30 years, PC consumption dipped below 50%. It’s official, says IHS iSupply, we’re in the post-PC era. According to their recent market report, PCs consumed less than half of the DRAMs shipped in the second quarter, down from 55% at the beginning of 2008. That’s an important change. For decades, the PC market was the 10-ton gorilla, driving design and production decisions made by DRAM manufacturers. As a result of new technologies and changes in usage patterns, the market is shifting toward portable designs and embedded systems.
"The arrival of the post-PC era doesn’t mean that people will stop using personal computers, or even necessarily that the PC market will stop expanding," said Clifford Leimbach, memory analyst at IHS. "What the post-PC era does mean is that personal computers are not at the center of the technology universe anymore—and are seeing their hegemony over the electronics supply chain erode." By the end of 2013, the PC DRAM market should shrink another 6%, while the mobile phone sector is expected to grow by almost 20%.
Life beyond PCs
In Q212, for the first time in 30 years, PC consumption dipped below 50%. It’s official, says IHS iSupply, we’re in the post-PC era. According to their recent market report, PCs consumed less than half of the DRAMs shipped in the second quarter, down from 55% at the beginning of 2008. That’s an important change. For decades, the PC market was the 10-ton gorilla, driving design and production decisions made by DRAM manufacturers. As a result of new technologies and changes in usage patterns, the market is shifting toward portable designs and embedded systems.
"The arrival of the post-PC era doesn’t mean that people will stop using personal computers, or even necessarily that the PC market will stop expanding," said Clifford Leimbach, memory analyst at IHS. "What the post-PC era does mean is that personal computers are not at the center of the technology universe anymore—and are seeing their hegemony over the electronics supply chain erode." By the end of 2013, the PC DRAM market should shrink another 6%, while the mobile phone sector is expected to grow by almost 20%.
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DadOf3TeenieBoppers
1/14/2013 11:55 AM EST
The main problem with SSDs is wearing them out from the continuous writing to the index tables. The solution is to design a multi-technology SSD; a CMOS RAM based area where the indexes are stored and then the non-volatile memory for the data files themselves.
During a loss of power the SSD will need sufficient capacitive storage to copy the CMOS RAM to some NV memory. When power is restored, the CMOS is reloaded from NV RAM and the disk is ready to operate.
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DadOf3TeenieBoppers
1/14/2013 11:59 AM EST
I have worked on requirements for airborne military computers. Customers do not like using capacitors to maintain CMOS RAM when power is down. But they generally do not have a problem using capacitors to store enough charge to copy volatile memory to NVM when power goes down. In addition, some simple algorithms can be developed that copy those parts of CMOS RAM to NVM that have been updated by do not appear to be changing that much, leaving the task of saving those parts of CMOS that do change frequently only when power goes out.
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selinz
2/12/2013 2:06 PM EST
The PC is still the center of the universe for most. Phones are much more capable but nobody would even consider buying a PC with the current technical limitations of a phone on storage, bandwidth, and processing power. Not to mention the screen, although the ability to hook up to HD TV's really obviates this limitation.
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R G.Neale
2/12/2013 7:52 PM EST
Relative success at the very leading edge of non-volatile memory development challenging Flash,i.e.MRAM, PCM, FeRAM ReRAM, CBRAM CNT-RAM etc. can only really be measured by a league table of design-in wins. In the past claims and counter claims that are for the most part the chatter of promoters selling futures have plagued many NV technology developments. More recently the claim, see
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4401477/Electronica--Micron-memory-to-skip-a-node
Quote “………Micron will ship tens of millions of units of 1-Gbit PCM in 2012 in 45-nm process in its leading-edge component, which combines a 1-Gbit PCM die with a 512-Mbit SDRAM and provides a LPDDR2 interface………”
A claim that was associated with an actual design win that has needed the near term shipping numbers to be modified down wards when more closely scrutinized by us. It was a claim that perhaps had more to do with enthusiasm than reality.
So please, bring on the design-in wins league table as the way of providing true measure of NV memory potential and success.
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