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Top 5 memory trends for 2013
Kristin Lewotsky
1/8/2013 2:17 PM EST
Enterprising drives
Even as the DRAM market is broadening from PCs to the portable and embedded market, nonvolatile solid state memory is busy moving into the enterprise space. The flash memory industry continues to focus on extending endurance and reliability to pry away market share from the spinning-disc folks. Whether based on single-level cell (SLC) or enterprise multi-level cell (e-MLC) flash, solid state drives (SSDs) are grabbing an ever a larger segment of that lucrative business market.
SSDs provide a speed advantage that can be essential for executing big data applications with a limited number of servers, for example. Flash memory is also a good fit for hybrid drives, in which an HDD handles the large volume storage but an SSD cache allows rapid access of key data. Some implementations keep all the data on the hard drive and use the SSD cache to temporarily mirror the data requiring speedy retrieval. Others take the concept one step further, not just using flash memory as a cache that mirrored data already on the hard disk drive but acting as a complete separate memory.
Cost remains somewhat of an issue—it’s unlikely that flash memory will ever achieve price parity with spinning-disc media. That said, it doesn’t necessarily need to. For applications that need ultra-high-speed access, the decision is based not on dollars per gigabyte but on dollars per I/O or I/O per dollar metric. Look for SSDs to continue broadening their foothold in this market.
Next: Non-volatile RAM
Even as the DRAM market is broadening from PCs to the portable and embedded market, nonvolatile solid state memory is busy moving into the enterprise space. The flash memory industry continues to focus on extending endurance and reliability to pry away market share from the spinning-disc folks. Whether based on single-level cell (SLC) or enterprise multi-level cell (e-MLC) flash, solid state drives (SSDs) are grabbing an ever a larger segment of that lucrative business market.
SSDs provide a speed advantage that can be essential for executing big data applications with a limited number of servers, for example. Flash memory is also a good fit for hybrid drives, in which an HDD handles the large volume storage but an SSD cache allows rapid access of key data. Some implementations keep all the data on the hard drive and use the SSD cache to temporarily mirror the data requiring speedy retrieval. Others take the concept one step further, not just using flash memory as a cache that mirrored data already on the hard disk drive but acting as a complete separate memory.
Cost remains somewhat of an issue—it’s unlikely that flash memory will ever achieve price parity with spinning-disc media. That said, it doesn’t necessarily need to. For applications that need ultra-high-speed access, the decision is based not on dollars per gigabyte but on dollars per I/O or I/O per dollar metric. Look for SSDs to continue broadening their foothold in this market.
Next: Non-volatile RAM
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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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