MRAM will kill FLASH ?

[Gordon J Milne]

Charles Manning wrote:
> On Thursday 12 June 2003 20:40, you wrote:
> 
>>who know MRAM(Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory) ?
>>Will it kill FLASH soon?
> 
> 
> THere was stuff a bit like MRAM\, I think called FRAM some time back -- 
> ??1980s?? by people called RAMTRON or something. Densities were not fantastic 
> and the endurance was limited not only by writing, but also reading. ie. 100M 
> reads or writes and it was dead.

Accoridng to the IEEE Spectrum article. FRAM read speed is around 50% that 
of DRAM. There was no mention in the article of an issue with device lifetime.

RAMTRON's FRAM devices are manufactured by Fujitsu. RAMTRON has been 
shipping FRAM devices since 1992.

> I certainly won't cry if flash goes away, but I hunch it will be a while 
> before MRAM becomes a serious competitor (ie. can be made cheaper than NAND).

Yes, it will be a little while so we shall all be putting up with the pain 
of FLASH fro quite soem time to come.

Gordon