Panasonic Ready to Roll with Next Generation Memory Technology

Posted 05/18/2011 at 7:15am | by Paul Lilly

6

Comments

Print

Panasonic said it's getting ready to start volume production of its ReRAM in 2012, which sounds like a DRAM maker taking a mulligan at the assembly line. It's actually something far cooler than that. Short for Resistance Random Access Memory, Panasonic's next generation memory chips are non-volatile, meaning they can store information when a system is powered down. That's just one of the many advantages to ReRAM.

ReRAM is about 10 times faster than flash memory while using one-tenth of the power, according to Nikkei Business Daily as reported by Reuters. These characteristics combined makes ReRAM ideally suited for a range of devices, including televisions in which Panasonic claims the standby power time would be cut by more than two-thirds. Use of ReRAM could also lead to smaller circuit boards and lower costs.

Panasonic isn't the only tech giant interested in ReRAM. According to Nikkei, Elpida and Sharp are jointly developing ReRAMs, while Toshiba and Samsung are both trying to develop new memory chips to replace DRAM. At some point, we'd like to this or similar technology ported over to the desktop.

Image Credit: Nikkei Business Daily