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IBM Demonstrates New Memory Technology Better Than Flash

Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 12:10 PM - by

A new chip technology, called phase-change storage, developed by IBM and its partners was recently demonstrated to be 500 times faster and use half the power of current Flash memory, according to Infoworld0. The technology could also replace smaller hard disks.

IBM said this technology would "do a better job of storing songs, pictures, and other data on iPods and digital cameras than current flash memory, and could someday replace disk drives." Phase change memory has advantages over Flash memory. Like Flash, it is also non-volatile, but so far the testing shows more durability compared to Flash memory which starts to break down after 100,000 writes.

IBM lead a team that included Qimonda and Taiwan's Macronix. Customers will have to wait a few years for the technology to become commercially practical.

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Jonkun227 said:

member since 02 Mar 2004 with 238 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Dec 12, 2006 4:03 am

Cool.

Of course I also distinctly recall a story in the late 90s in Wired magazine in which an IBM developed storage system was detailed. It was a 1" crystal cube. Data was recorded in 3 dimensional space. The 1" cube had a capacity greater than one terabyte.

While the phase-shift memory system is more practical for everyday use, I would really like to see that crystal storage come to market. Those of us who archive vast quantities of irreplaceable data would love such a permanent solution, rather than filling multiple hard drives with redundant data.

- Jon

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