Will future Macs have MRAM?
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Aug 30, 2005 at 1:06am
MRAM (magnetoresistive random access memory) is the first radically new memory technology to show real commercial promise for many years, according to a report by the Research and Markets firm.
MRAM is already being commercialized, and Research and Markets says it’s becoming one of the first complex nano-engineered products to hit the marketplace. There are approximately 15 actual and likely suppliers of MRAM including Freescale, and less well-known start-ups.
According to Freescale—the microprocessor spinoff of Motorola that makes PowerPC G4 chips for some Macs—MRAM combines the best attributes of the three major memories—density of eDRAM, the speed of eSRAM and the non-volatility of Flash—onto a “single” chip. MRAM uses magnetic moments, rather than an electric charge, to determine the on-off state of the memory bit cell. It allows a single memory solution to replace multiple memory options within one chip, helping to enable faster, lower power, more cost-effective solutions for next-generation wireless, as well as other memory-intensive products, according to Freescale.
MRAM is a method of storing data bits using magnetic charges instead of the electrical charges used by DRAM (dynamic random access memory). By combining the high speed of static RAM and the high density of DRAM, proponents say MRAM could be used to significantly improve electronic products by storing greater amounts of data, enabling it to be accessed faster while consuming less battery power than existing electronic memory, according to info at the TechTarget Web site.
“Conventional random access memory (RAM) computer chips store information as long as electricity flows through them,” TechTarget notes. “Once power is turned off, the information is lost unless it has been copied to a hard drive or floppy disk. MRAM, however, retains data after a power supply is cut off. Replacing DRAM with MRAM could prevent data loss and enable computers that start instantly, without waiting for software to boot up.”
Freescale—which has more than 100 U.S. patents on MRAM, more than any other semiconductor company—successfully demonstrated a 1MB nonvolatile, low-power MRAM chip with read and write cycles of less than 50ns in 2002. The following year the company announced the chip and sampled it to a select group of customers in the largest MRAM demonstration in the industry to date—and the first to be integrated with CMOS using copper interconnect technology. A 4MB chip was sampled to a number of customers in 2004.
Since MRAM combines nonvolatility, endurance, speed and density, it has the potential to function as a universal memory in many applications and eliminates the need to combine memories. Consumer electronics, automobiles and PCs are examples of the potential uses of MRAM. In applications where the speed of microprocessors is limited by the bottleneck of data transfer between nonvolatile memory and processor chips, MRAM is designed to remove the bottleneck by placing the high-speed nonvolatile memory directly in communications with the microprocessor, according to Freescale.
What’s more, MRAM is expected to have better write characteristics because it does not require high-voltage programming required for nonvolatile Flash. It will offer “instant on” capability and is expected to reduce the battery power drain for portable electronic devices because it doesn’t require refresh. Because MRAM is easily integrated with conventional CMOS, single-chip solutions, Freescale says it will reduce the cost of multichip memory/processor applications.
Other companies are also involved. In June 2004, Infineon unveiled a 16-Mbit prototype based on 0.18. Production in larger quantities of MRAM chips is expected this year.
Cats Says:
Intel presented the “instant off/on” aspect of entertainment systems under Viiv. This could be one of the technologies to make that happen.
Posted on August 30, 2005
JacWol Says:
If there is only a 4mb chip available in 2004, what are the chances that there is a significantly sized chip available for use in the next few months, or even years. I would love to see a instant on technology, which is only feasible through a technology such as this, but in all practicality, the size just isnt significant enough. I think that a hybrid of the MRAM and currently used technologies would be the most conceivable in the near future. However, costs of designing such a system can be immense.
Posted on August 30, 2005
DAG Says:
The big questions are how much a price premium and can it be delivered in quantity? Apple has had a long history of jumping on technologies and then not being able to handle market demands.
Posted on August 30, 2005
Rus Says:
“Apple has had a long history of jumping on technologies and then not being able to handle market demands.”
Such as? SCSI? No! Firewire? No problem there either!
I’ll ad and say this may be a minute “foot in the door” for Freescale - creating a new partnership with Intel via it’s relationship with the two and Apple.
Posted on August 30, 2005
Tim Says:
I think MRAM would be a problem for Microsoft.
... a reboot won’t flush out the garbage !
Posted on August 30, 2005
JacWol Says:
I think Apple has never had a delivery problem. The only time that this has ever been an issue was with IPods, and this was mainly because the market deman was unforseeable. Apple can pull it off, but they will have to rely on an outside supplier (as with processors and pretty much everything else). So if Apple wants the mram, they will get it delivered. Problem is, for the third party to scale up production to meet apple’s demand, what will that cost be and how will that effect our prices?
Posted on August 30, 2005
Phil Says:
4mb chips would be a 64mb memory stick - or even a 128mb. Memory sticks have 8 or 16 chips on them. So this technology may be ready for use in a year.
Posted on August 30, 2005
JacWol Says:
Whats 128mb anymore? That would mean that even with a four ram-chip setup youre only limited to 512mb. Assuming that they have progressed a little bit, say to 8mb per chip, you top out at a gig of ram. I dont know about anyone else, but the only machine below that which i own is a windows based PC, which i havent used in ages. You would be moving to a better technology, true, but you would at the same time be limiting the amount of ram and therefore performance of a machine.
Posted on August 30, 2005
trey Says:
This stuff is going to replace hard drives....I can’t wait.
Posted on August 30, 2005
jacWol Says:
That i will agree with. This has the potential to be one of the biggest steps in Hard drive technology. More so, if you were to use this as a hard drive, maybe ram will no longer be needed, as the speed of the hard drive would be fast enough not to need to be bridged by ram to not slow down the bus speed. That would be a marvelous step in computing.
Posted on August 30, 2005
Alf Says:
Hi Dennis, we’ve translated the article and posted in our website:
http://www.faq-mac.com/mt/archives/013670.php
To help the conversation, people in our site is saying that this kind of memory is way too slow to use in computers. Maybe it will find its way in devices such as the iPod.
Kind regards
Alf
Posted on August 31, 2005
Jim Morrison Says:
MRAM is a technology that has been around for some time. The challeneges are to scale it up to NAND and NOR capacities at the similar or lower costs. Freescale and others may sample but it will be quite some time before MRAM is available in mass production. In the mean time, enjoy your hard drives and your NAND!
Posted on August 31, 2005
Maxwell Robertson Says:
Didn’t it say in the article that it was FASTER than RAM? Anyway, if it’s used as a hard drive, it wouldn’t need to be faster than RAM. This is cool technology regardless.
Posted on August 31, 2005
JacWol Says:
Yes, the speed is faster than, or equal to, current ram speed. Also, this would be an absolutely excellent hard drive replacement. If you consider that ram is primarily a place to store data from the hard drive, then if you could use the ram as a complete hard drive, then you could increase the speed of a computer 10 fold. Gaming world gets a +++.
Posted on August 31, 2005
Christopher Ruter Says:
This is something that could be really huge. If is as simple as I understand and as how this article puts it would be similar to the RAM disk that used to be with OS 8 and 9. If it is possible to potentially use this as a replacement as a hard drive it wold be as ground breaking as when the first HD or “magnetic storage device” as it was called when invented by a company named ERA in Minnesota. It spun at 600 RPM, stored 24,000 MB. That was in 1946. If MRAM will have higher capacity in the future this is the possible replacement to convental RAM as was the HD to paper cards in 1946.
Posted on September 01, 2005
Ron Mertens Says:
Hi Guys.
If you’re interested in MRAM (Which is indeed exciting) check out this information site -
R.
Posted on October 06, 2005
Dr.Wong Says:
There is no need to be negative about this new Technology!
MRAM (in the future) will eliminate the need for hard drives! Imagine simply turning on your computer and having your OS ready right away! Also, apple is working on newer technology, related to MRAM, that allows you to frun multiple Operating systems at the same time! You will be able to flip through your different Mac and Windows desktops just as easily as you do applications by pressing Alt+Tab (Mac Option key + Tab).
It may take a while to complete, but it will be well, and I say again, well worth the wait.
Posted on June 16, 2006
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
MacDude Says:
Fit’s right in to the low power angle of the new Intel chips.
Posted on August 30, 2005