Feb
22
2012
0

The future of storage, set to kill SSD's, ReRAM

hp reram

What if you could combine the RAM and hard-drive onto the same storage unit without it losing its memory when the power breaks? It would in theory mean close to no loading times as you would already have everything in your RAM. But wouldn’t it be slow? Apparently it would be up to 3X faster than todays standard SSD harddisks.
ReRAM has actually been in development for a while, but is really hard to manufacture. However now it looks like we might actually see it in consumer computers in our lifetime!

The principle of the ‘memrister‘, upon which ReRAM is based, has been around for 40 years. Memristers work by ‘remembering’ the amount and polarity of current that passes through them as electrical resistance, which enables them to store data in ReRAM. HP believes that memristers have other potential uses as logic gates and switches that “could one day, for example, act like synapses inside computer circuits, mimicking the behavior of neurons in the human brain”.

So who is working to commericialise ReRAM? Companies include include SanDisk, Sony, Panasonic, Micron, Hynix, DSI and more. http://unit.aist.go.jp/esprit/corr-ele/research/images/Image_ReRAM_1.gif