Intel replaces DRAM with PRAM for taking Flash out
Posted March 9th, 2007 by Alex Ion
Intel is unveiling their strategy and ideas for the future, announcing that shortly they will release for testing the new phase-change memory known as PCM or PRAM, and by the end of the year 2007 they will start mass production.
PRAM memory is a replacer of the well known flash memories, and is faster and very reliable with much smaller dimensions. If it were to compare them the biggest advantage of the PRAM memories is that they resist to as many as 100 million writing cycles, while the cells of a flash memory degrade after 10,000 cycles and that the read latency is reduced to 20ns for PRAM memories from 50-90ns for flash. However if we were to compare it to the DDR2’s latency of ~3ns this is not the fastest thing out there.
For implementing the new PRAM memory modules, Intel has the license for them, since 2000 for using the Ovonyx technology. The new PRAM memory is considered the killer of flash memory.
[via ArsTechnica]
