Samsung introduces working PRAM

Here are some excerpts from an EE Times article posted today (11 Sept 2006 5:02 AM EDT) by Sean Shim.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. announced Monday (Sept. 11) it has completed the industry's first fully working prototype of a 512-Mbit Phase-change Random Access Memory (PRAM), what the company claims is expected to become the main memory device to replace high-density NOR flash memories within the next decade. The PRAM has the smallest cell size of any working memory that is free of inter-cell noise, allowing virtually unlimited scalability.

The PRAM features the fast processing speed of RAM for its operating functions combined with the nonvolatile features of flash memory for storage, giving it the nickname of "Perfect RAM", Samsung said. As the PRAM can rewrite data without having to first erase data previously accumulated, it is effectively 30-times faster than conventional flash memory. It is also expected to have at least 10-times the endurance of the conventional flash memory, Samsung added.

Adoption of PRAM is expected to be more popular in the future designs of multi-function handsets and for other mobile applications, where faster speeds translate into immediately noticeable boosts in performance.

This looks to me like it may be the start of a significant change in both the size and speed of the memory we use for our PDAs, MP3 players and just about everything else too. You can read the complete EETimes article here. I also found a SlashDot post here.