Follow this blog:
RSS

Samsung’s ‘melting’ memory chips could boost mobile phone battery life by 20%

By | September 30, 2009, 7:33 AM PDT

Samsung has begun producing a new type of “melting” memory chip that could replace flash memory and boost battery life in mobile phones by more than 20 percent.

The world’s largest maker of memory chips, Samsung said that it is now manufacturing phase-change random access memory, or PRAM, in 512-megabit capacities.

Phase change memory chips have been discussed for decades. In them, a chemical compound called chalcogenide — which is also used in CD-RW rewritable disks — is heated to very high temperatures. The heat changes the physical state of the compound, and the two resulting states become the binary “ones and zeros” used by computers for data storage.

What’s advantageous about PRAM is that it can read and write data 10 times faster and at lower power than the conventional flash memory found in mobile phones, portable media players and USB thumb drives, the company says. Specifically, single bits can be changed to a zero or a one without the need to first erase an entire block of cells, a drawback of flash memory.

Phase change memory is also “executable,” another advantage as cell phone applications continue to grow in popularity.

“We expect it to become one of our core memory products in the future,” said Sei-Jin Kim, vice president of the mobile memory planning and enabling group in the Memory Division at Samsung Electronics, in a statement.

Samsung’s chip is produced using 60-nanometer manufacturing technology, the same process technology currently used in flash memory production.

Start your week smarter with our weekly e-mail newsletter. It's your cheat sheet for good ideas. Get it.

Andrew Nusca

About Andrew Nusca

Andrew Nusca is editor of SmartPlanet.

Andrew Nusca

Andrew Nusca

Editor

Andrew Nusca is editor of SmartPlanet and an associate editor for ZDNet. Previously, he worked at Money, Men's Vogue and Popular Mechanics magazines. He holds degrees from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and New York University. He based in New York but resides in Philadelphia.

Follow him on Twitter.

Andrew Nusca

Andrew Nusca
Andrew Nusca does not hold any investments in the companies he covers.
7
Comments

Join the conversation!

Follow via:
RSS
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Samsung's 'melting' memory chips could boost mobile phone battery life
You are quite mistaken. PRAM CANNOT "read and write data 10 times
faster and at lower power than the conventional flash memory found in
mobile phones, portable media players and USB thumb drives."

NAND Flash writes and reads at speeds up to 200 megabytes per second.
PRAM reads almost as fast as Flash, but writes at 0.3 megabytes a
second (per Numonyx P8P datasheet). So, actually, Flash is 500x as
fast as PRAM in write. And in terms of PRAM's power consumption, it
is the same as Flash, not better.

No so smart, after all!

http://ecdfan.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-spot-fake-samsung-and-
pram.html
Posted by ECD Fan
30th Sep 2009
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Samsung's 'melting' memory chips could boost mobile phone battery life by 20%
Perhaps the problem in speed is in the semantics. The previous comment disputes the claim that the memory is faster saying that ?Flash is 500x as fast as PRAM in write?. The press release from Samsung (quoted here) says that ?it is effectively 30-times faster than conventional flash?. Key word there is ?effectively?, without the overhead of deleting a block prior to a write may be why.
Posted by lpeters@...
1st Oct 2009
0 Votes
+ -
DIP package
Where did you guys get the photo?
Highly unlikely any company would use old dual in line packaging, is it?
Posted by Kiryat8
1st Oct 2009
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Samsung's 'melting' memory chips could boost mobile phone battery life by 20%
It seems that is the picture from the Samsung website! I also think the DIP choice is kind of weird in this day and age! Though it would mitigate the problem of heat from soldering a surface mounted chip!
Posted by leopards
1st Oct 2009
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Samsung's 'melting' memory chips could boost mobile phone battery life by 20%
it's just a prototype. DIPs are much easier to probe and debug.
Posted by chefp
1st Oct 2009
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Samsung's 'melting' memory chips could boost mobile phone battery life
The picture is of the 2005 prototype (not the 2009 one). The Smart
Takes are not so smart, after all.

To avoid semantics issues, Samsung should publish a detailed datasheet,
where the actual performance data is disclosed. Their failure to do so
indicates that the chip is basically inferior and unusable. But it
makes for a good PR, as the Smart Takes here have proven. They have no
clue what they wrote about, but they sound smart, don't they.
Posted by ECD Fan
1st Oct 2009
0 Votes
+ -
@ECD Fan
My mistake! I accidentally included the wrong link and image. It's been updated.

Thanks for the catch.
Posted by andrew.nusca
1st Oct 2009
Join the conversation
Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]

Join the SmartPlanet Community and join the conversation! Signing-up is free and quick, Do it now, we want to hear your opinion.