Back to the Future: A New Kind of Memory Technology on the Horizon
Ben Erickson July 6 2011 06:00:00
In a recent article in PhysOrg.com, a breakthrough by IBM has been announced which makes a new kind of memory, Multi-Level Phase-Change Memory, finally a reliable technology for long-term storage. Multi-Level PCM is an exciting prospect because it is both very fast (about 100x faster than flash) and also very durable. It can endure something like 10 million write cycles, compared to your typical flash drive which can only last for about 3 thousand write cycles. This makes it a perfect candidate for workstation and server storage applications, which depend on both speed and durability. Compared to 30-second to sometimes 5-minute boot times, computers and servers could boot essentially instantaneously. Read and write times are also greatly improved, making response times much faster.
The hurdle overcome is called "short-term drift," which your inner-physicist may read about in the article. This is not the first memory breakthrough for IBM, which recently turned 100. In 1966, they were also responsible for inventing DRAM, which is the technology virtually all computers and servers use today to run programs and manipulate data. It takes a long time for technology to go from discovery to market-readiness. It is anticipated that Multi-Level PCM may be on the market by 2016. If you would like a free review for your business to see how you can better leverage technology to drive profits, give us a call!
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