IBM Announces Memory Breakthrough

Two points bother me...even with 5 million writes, that wouldn't necessarily last all that long doing the work of RAM in a PC, and when it does hit the market, I hope that it is in something that can be added to existing hardware, rather than requiring a whole new build.

This is even further out there than Firefox improving memory

IBM has been working on PCM for years.

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY 23 May 2005:

IBM, Infineon and Macronix announced today a joint research initiative to explore the potential of a new form of computer memory technology called phase-change memory (PCM).

So they now have produced some PCM chips in a friggin lab.

Made in IBM Labs: IBM Scientists Demonstrate Computer Memory Breakthrough

Zurich, Switzerland - 30 Jun 2011: For the first time, scientists at IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) have demonstrated that a relatively new memory technology, known as phase-change memory (PCM), can reliably store multiple data bits per cell over extended periods of time

When I see it on the market in quantities then I will get excited about it

mjm6783 said:

PCM uses electrical charges to change areas on a glassy material from crystalline to random or amorphous.

This whole article sounded like some sci fi

IMO that is what the whole idea of PCM chips in mass production sounds like at this time.

Of course many on earth felt that way about Zefram Cochrane's initial attempts to develop a Ward Drive engine for space flight.

Cochrane was born in 2032. During the 2060s, he lived in Bozeman, Montana in North America, where he and his team of engineers began developing the warp drive and finally built Earth's first warp ship, the Phoenix.

I know that my time line tenses are messed up, but after all it is Sci-Fi that we are talking about here. For all we know we could be in a parallel universe lagging the other one by a Century so so.

johnwillyums said:

Wow. That is a massive performance leap.

It's a massive leap for NAND-kind. Or should that be one small step? I forget.