At the Flash Memory Summit 2023 in August, it wasn’t just SK hynix’s cutting-edge 321-layer 3D NAND flash that won awards. Experts also awarded prizes future-proof ULTRARAM memory, which combines the speed of RAM and the non-volatility of flash memory. The company for its commercial production was created only at the beginning of this year, and the FMS 23 summit was actually a debut for it.
Image Source: Quinas Technology
ULTRARAM memory is young in every sense. Its structure was invented by scientists from the British universities of Lancaster and Warwick. An article dedicated to the new memory was published in the journal Nature in 2019. In 2022, the developers created memory samples, and in January of this year, they announced the creation of Quinas Technology to promote it.
A distinctive feature of ULTRARAM can be considered the highest resistance to wear and loss of charge. The developers promise at least 10 million rewrite cycles and charge retention for 1000 years. It is possible to close the lid of the laptop during the game and continue it after 1000 years by lifting it again. The game will continue from the moment it was stopped by the laptop’s lid closing sensors.
High stability and ultra-long charge retention are promised by ULTRARAM’s design and materials used, and it’s not silicon. The storage cell and the electron-rich layer are separated by three barriers of indium arsenide and aluminum antimonide (InAs/AlSb). The insulation is so good that charge leakage can be neglected. But how do electrons get into a cell?
For this, there is such a well-studied and applied phenomenon in electronics as tunneling. If the electrons are given a certain energy, which the inventors call resonant, they are able to overcome the barriers and end up in the cell. You can remove them from there (erase or overwrite the cell) under similar conditions. On their own, they actually never leave it. The charge will be stored in the cell without the need to supply power to it, as is the case with flash memory. At the same time, the speed characteristics of ULTRARAM are approaching the speed of RAM.
Thus, the first samples of ULTRARAM showed a switching speed of less than 10 ms at an erase voltage of 2.5 V, which is presented as the best result among promising types of non-volatile memory. In theory, the performance promises to be within 10 ns.
Developer soberly assesses the prospects ULTRARAM does not believe that it will “blow up” the storage market. But for a number of areas it can be very, very popular. For example, for peripheral Internet devices, the power limitation of which forces us to look for compromises between memory sizes, performance and consumption. Such a “non-switching RAM” will be in demand in servers, as well as in the field of creating an artificial brain, where data is stored and processed in one place.
Negotiations with manufacturers are already underway, developers say. ULTRARAM production may start sooner than we might have imagined.
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2023-08-19 12:01:00
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