Intel Wants to Move Beyond Flash

Many types of digital memory are out there, but each has its Achilles Heel. HDDs need to spin, eat up a lot of power and are relatively slow. RAM is fast but volatile and poses challenges in working well with logic components. Flash memory is getting cheaper but has a limited number of write cycles. Well, according to a recent article on EETimes.com , Intel thinks it can move past the downfalls of the various memory types that are now available with two new technologies that could be successors to flash memory. Both are in the think-tank stage but the goal is a low-cost device with fast read and write times that is easy to manufacture. One of the new memory technologies is polymeric ferroelectric RAM (PFRAM), or polymer memory, which uses two layers of metal strands running at perpendicular angles with a thin polymer sheet sandwiched in between. The second is Ovonyx unified memory (OUM). OUM is built on a silicon wafer but uses a thin film of a special material called chalcogenide, which is used in rewriteable CD-ROMs and DVDs. Ovonyx Inc. owns much of the intellectual property in the field and is collaborating with Intel to make the idea work. Ultimately, Intel hopes to come up with a solution that amounts to what most folks look for in a car: cheap, fast, and reliable.