Next-gen Memory: 20x faster, 10x longer lifetime, and oodles more space

Overheal

http://gizmodo.com/resistive-ram-terabytes-of-storage-20-times-faster-th-1038661137

Jamie Condliffe, Gizmodo wrote:

There's never a shortage of new experimental forms of memory—but a company called Crossbar has now worked up something called resistive RAM which could wipe the floor with NAND.
At half the size of conventional NAND RAM but with 20 times faster write speeds—around 140MB/s—this stuff really means business. It also uses 20 times less power, last 10 times as long, and reads data at 17MB/s. Its 3D structure also provides it with impressive data density, too: one 200mm2 chip apparently provides upwards of 1TB of storage. It's not exactly a fair fight.
The new style of RAM, which is just about ready to find its way into devices, uses a three-layer structure that can be stacked in three dimensions, but can be manufactured in a standard chip factory. More than that, it's claimed it can even be made using existing production infrastructure.
The new RAM will first roll out in embedded SoCs—though Crossbar is the exclusive holder of RRAM patents, so it's not clear how cheap it'll be. Fingers crossed it proves affordable. [Crossbar via VentureBeat via Engadget]

From the sounds of it the tech may be ready to roll out now or in the short future. 3D fabrication seems to have found a new happy home outside of 3rd and 4th gen Intel Core fabs. Wonder what the cost will be, initially demand will be huge but if it can be fabricated in existing industry the supply should be the same as current tech.

RoyalMarine

That's insane!

Hopefully it won't end up to be stupid expensive.

excollier

It will, to start with.

Freddy Smelly

17mb/s is very slow.... most ssd drives can manage 300mb/s

Khannie

Freddy Smelly wrote: »

17mb/s is very slow.... most ssd drives can manage 300mb/s

That's per chip. Total throughput will be very high indeed.

Freddy Smelly

Khannie wrote: »

That's per chip. Total throughput will be very high indeed.

unless its a typo and its more like 17gb/s

the_syco

http://www.crossbar-inc.com/events/press-releases/crossbar-emerges-from-stealth-mode.html

This new generation of non-volatile memory will be capable of storing up to one terabyte (TB) of data on a single 200mm2 chip, enabling massive amounts of information, such as 250 hours of HD movies, to be stored and played back from an IC smaller than a postage stamp.

TBH, if it's a lot cheaper than €1,319.79, they'll do well.

reads data at 17MB/s

http://www.crossbar-inc.com/assets/img/media/Crossbar-RRAM-Technology-Whitepaper-080413.pdf

Characteristics |NAND |Crossbar RRAM |Comments
Program Performance| 7MB/sec |140MB/sec |RRAM performance is 20x faster
Asynchronous (XIP) Read |.04MB/sec |17MB/sec |RRAM will provide faster NAND-like products

Not really sure what this means, but thought people here may find it interesting.

BloodBath

I don't know where they are pulling this 20 times faster than nand claim from. Current nand based ssd's are already maxing the bandwidth limits of sata 3/600 and usb3 with even the smaller 120gb and 250gb Samsung evo drives pushing 500-550 MB's sequential read/write speeds.

That's 4 times faster writes than this crossbar memory and 35 times faster reads. They don't mention their random read speeds either. I'd imagine this is for good reason as well as the current nand ssd's are off the charts in this regard.

It says there the read speed is an awful 17MB/s. Laughable. I'd say their claims of using 20 times less power and lasting 10 times longer are all bollox as well. Maybe I'm being unfair comparing them to ssd's? Maybe their application is better for mobile devices? Thumb drives? I'm not sure but from those figures they are miles behind ssd's and newer nand performance.

The pcb in the smaller 120gb and 250gb ssd's are a lot smaller than the housing holding them as well. They could easily reduce the size further if they wanted to.

Am I missing something here?

Overheal

I think you are. SSDs are constructed NAND devices made from NAND building blocs. Look at Sycos chart, each block of NAND is much slower than crossbar and they're what make up SSDs.

Try to think of it like, dual-channel memory or a RAID 0 array, you can stack a lot of those NAND chips together and have them read and write in an array to get up to current performance levels but imagine that same technique applied to crossbar...

BloodBath

Cheers I though as much but they don't exactly make it clear.

Each block according to crossbar themselves is slower. The info there is from 3 years ago and I wouldn't expect the company selling the stuff to give accurate or reliable figures.

The numbers still don't add up to what they claim. The newer 120gb ssds are only using 2 x 19nm nand chips.

How many of these blocks are on a single nand chip?

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/storage/58229-samsung-ssd-840-evo-120gb/

Anyway if they can provide even faster speeds and more storage in a smaller space for a cheaper price then it's all good. Probably won't be seeing it compete with nand for about 5-10 years though?

Overheal

as the article points out the fabrication techniques aren't all that different and can be done in existing fabs with minor upgrades. Within 5, I would be confident. Similarly when Intel Core made the jump to 3D transistors in Ivy Bridge it didn't require a huge reconstruction of fab plants, though they are now looking to break ground on their next gen fab