Phase-change memory chip may make flash memory chip obsolete

by **Brent Burns** on Mon Dec 11, 2006 11:00 am

Just read about this interesting article from Yahoo!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061211/ts_alt_afp/usitresearchchipscompanyibmmacronixqimonda_061211134556

Thought this would be interesting to most of you all.

**Sponsor**

by **laxfan25** on Mon Dec 11, 2006 12:44 pm

Sounds like another iPod will be coming out soon then!

Really could be ahuge breakthrough - with half the power usage of even flash chips - very cool.

by **Hackalicious** on Tue Dec 12, 2006 12:13 am

laxfan25 wrote:Sounds like another iPod will be coming out soon then!

Really could be ahuge breakthrough - with half the power usage of even flash chips - very cool.

Sounds cool, but a big unknowns is cost.

If they can fabricate these with existing plants, at a cost less than flash and a in reasonable physical form factor, then it could have potential to replace traditional hard drives.

Less power, less heat, and no moving parts would make it great for laptops. Flash would be too, except the production costs are too high.

by **OAKS** on Tue Dec 12, 2006 12:44 pm

They already have some flash hard drives, but they're pretty pricey

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=16#2621

They look great though - very small, no moving heads or platters to break like in regular hard drives, and no noise. There are also Compact Flash to IDE and SATA adapters, which are a bit cheaper and have many of the same advantages, although not quite as small because of the adapter. You can also get most computers to boot from a USB key nowadays.

by **horn17** on Thu Dec 14, 2006 7:40 pm

very cool...this should be intresting...we have some here (at work), and yes they do still have some issues with minor glitches, but only one of them has "crashed".....software crashes...