Magnetoresistive memory MRAM refers to the perspective non-volatile memory, which should replace DRAM and even SRAM in the computational systems and processors. Â In one case, it will be a non-volatile operational memory, and in the second - a non-volatile cache memory. Â Unlike the memory of Intel 3D XPoint, which began as a commercial product for the PC market in May this year, the memory of MRAM has been on the market for a long time - about ten years or slightly more. Â During this time, the
main forces of the developers were thrown to increase the density of the MRAM record.
Thus, for five years from 2012, the developer of the original MRAM memory - Everspin - increased the capacity of commercial chips of magnetoresistive memory from 16 Mbit to 256 Mbit. Â By the way, not the last role in this played the company GlobalFoundries. Â The agreement on the introduction of the technological process and production of the release of the ST-MRAM chips on the GlobalFoundries lines is concluded in 2014. Â Today, GlobalFoundries massively produces 256-MBit MRAM chips using 40-nm
process technology and is preparing to release new products using 28 nm and 22 nm process technology on FD-SOI plates. Â Prior to the start of cooperation with GlobalFoundries, Everspin received 130nm memory from its production partner, the density of which left much to be desired, although it could deliver over 70 million MRAM chips to the market.
The other day at the annual Flash Summit, Everspin showed two developments based on MRAM technology: 40-nm 256-Mbit chips and a memory card based on it (1 and 2 GB capacities), as well as 28-nm 1-Gbit MRAM chips. Â MRAM memory has already been used as a non-volatile buffer in SSDs, in which it replaces the buffer from DRAM. Â Thus, without loss of performance, the SSD buffer becomes insensitive to power failure. Â In the case of using special drivers for Windows and Linux, delays in working with
drives on Everspin memory are reduced to 2 µs, and the speed of work in terms of IOPS increases to 7 million operations per second.
Supplies of SSDs with a capacity of up to 2 GB on Everspin memory start before the end of this year. Â The issue price is $ 2200. Â But there is one limitation. Â The novelty is designed to work with the open interface Gen-Z . Â Commercial support for the GenZ standard is expected in a year or two. Â This year, Everspin drives can only rely on IBM Power9 platforms. Â IBM systems on processors with a new architecture support the OpenCAPI interface, which is compatible with Everspin drives.
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