Magnetic RAM technology announced
Magnetic RAM (MRAM) is computer memory that uses magnetic properties to store data instead of electricity and the coming avaibility of such chips on the open market has been announced by Freescale. MRAM requires no electricity to retain data in memory unlike current chips and the possible applications are endless.
"This is the most significant memory introduction in this decade," said Will Strauss, an analyst with research firm Forward Concepts.
"This is radically new technology. People have been dabbling in this for years, but nobody has been able to make it in volume."
Flash memory can also store data without power but MRAM has faster read/ write speeds and does not degrade over time. Austin-based Freescale has been working on this technology for almost ten years. It will be interesting to see how the price of VRAM compares to the expensive flash memory.
MRAM features:
(via BBC)
-jk