Friday, June 17, 2011

A new ReRAM by Globafoundries

Researchers from the Universities of Singapore and Nanyang NUS (National University of Singapore), the scientific agency of Singapore, Peking University, Soitec Globalfoundries and presented a new ReRAM (also called RRAM) at the conference that took VLSI held this week. Each memory cell consists of a nickel layer, a hafnium oxide, aluminum oxide and a polysilicon electrode.

She has the distinction can be made with common materials and the production lines today. An electrode made of silicon, instead of the conventional platinum model presented so far, can greatly reduce costs. The ReRAM or Resistive RAM uses electrical resistance to characterize a bit. Low resistance will be a 1 or a 0 and a high electrical resistance will mean the opposite.

They were the subject of much research presented during the conference this year and we talk more, because it is assumed that they would be an excellent replacement for NAND. For example, the model presented by GLOBALFOUNDRIES a report on-off high. This is important because it allows to distinguish the two states, but it means above all that there is great scope for miniaturization of cells that are more tolerant of higher finesse burning the flash memory.

Globalfoundries also achieved a 100% yield on a wafer of 150 mm (6 inches), which is a good sign. It will now work on larger wafers of 200 mm (8 inches) and 300 mm (12 inches) are more common in plants now (see "diameter wafers and Performance"). The founder did not mention packaging and mass production.

The ReRAM still at an experimental stage, but his research paper and other HP or Panasonic suggests that marketing a consumer product would be possible within five years. The memory modules Globalfoundries are stable even at operating temperatures up to 200 ° C and could be rewritten a million times, which is well above the flash memory that runs between 5 000 and 10 000 cycles depending on the model and the finer burning.

Finally, the founder claims that the cell requires 10 ms to move from one state to another. In May, Panasonic presented its ReRAM and said put it on the market in 2012. Memory cells from lab consisted of platinum and titanium. These materials are more expensive than Globalfoundries and should produce chips ReRAM easily accessible to manufacturers of consumer products.

We also believe that 2012, if maintained, will be a symbolic date for the production of the first chips for niche markets, but that their democracy will take longer. Manufacturers are waging a war architecture. Indeed, all ReRAM presented so far are not designed the same way. Those of HP using a new electrical component, the memristor (see "HP believes selling memristor in 2013").

Fujitsu is working on him on a cell ReRAM nickel-titanium. It is currently impossible to give a winner. We end by noting a very fair statement of our colleagues TechOn!. The presence of Singapore in this research is important. The country is known for his research on the hard drives. It seems that now turns to the active development of ReRAM.

We also welcome the presence of French SOITEC is mentioned as an author of the paper Globalfoundries.

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