sorry, slipped our memory

A couple of interesting stories appeared lately, and perhaps not coincidentally.

They concern the commercial release of ReRam memory, which promises to bring up to 100-fold increase, and lower power use, in non-volatile memory which is now core technology. (think flash drives, and  SSD  replacements for disk drives).


 The technology is based on properties of titanium dioxide discovered by HP in 2008. In 2010 Hp and Hynix had announced that they would have a ReRam product to market in 2013.  

Elpida had also announced a similar timeframe, for their product, and then promptly filed for bankruptcy.

Then in May  of this year, just when you would think the way had been cleared for HP/Hynix to get in ahead of others, came an announcement from UCL researchers that they had stumbled upon the same behaviour in silicon oxide that offers even better performance and power characteristics.


Then this month HP and Hynix announced that their Reram wouldnt be available until 2014, citing commercial reasons i.e. cannibalism of the existing flash memory market!

Hmm,  is that because they couldnt say "oops, we've been gazumped!"

It's a pity that all these circumstances have meant a new technology is held back for two more years than we might have seen.

Still, it will be a massive deal when those new chips do start rolling off the lines. Speeding up SSD drives by a factor of over 10 is big news - if in a few more years it is by a factor of 100 ...