Toshiba says its 1GB MRAM chips are "almost ready," we're ready now

It wasn't long ago that IBM promised to unleash its racetrack MRAM (magnetoresistive RAM) on a power and speed-hungry computing public, but now Toshiba says its 1GB MRAM chips are "almost ready". The chips use Spin-RAM (STT-RAM) and Toshiba fully expects them to take over where DRAM left off by 2015. They say their new chips use about 10 percent the energy used by DRAM and, like MRAM is supposed to do, retain memory even after the power supply has been cut off. So what does this mean? Instant boot-up, fast access times, and super-low power consumption. While MRAM has been announced by others, capacities and speeds promised by this 1GB jobby from Toshiba will certainly make things worthwhile.

[Via MRAM-info]

[Zal @ Jun 2nd 2008 1:56PM]

Magentoresistive --they must have been contacted by T-Mobiles lawyers.

[James Yopp @ Jun 2nd 2008 1:59PM]

In case you didn't know, Engadget is the #1 magento-resistive site in the world. Remember the throw-down with Deutsche Telekom?

[konshuss @ Jun 2nd 2008 1:50PM]

percent* ... i think. who cares, MRAM will remember your spellcheck settings.

[Pochi @ Jun 2nd 2008 1:53PM]

"Technology will change in 7 years."

All hail Toshiba and their crystal ball! Should have peered into that thing when you were cranking in HD-DVD players.

[Don Wilson @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:53PM]

@Zal

I think it was Marvel

[Jagster @ Jun 2nd 2008 1:58PM]

"retain memory even after the power supply has been cut off"

So how does this sit with the security and DRM folks? Makes the whole "using compressed air to freeze DDR" trick unnecessary.

[Josh Warner @ Jun 2nd 2008 9:08PM]

There are some interesting implications here. An operating system written specifically for such RAM would not need to close programs, or do any of the other crap that makes shutdowns so long. Hibernates are a thing of the past, as killing the power IS effectively hibernation - without the need to read the RAM dump back from the HD, so it really would be instant-on.

Now for the downside, speaking from a Windows viewpoint here. People won't shut programs down, browsers/word processors could be open permanently, to say nothing of the little services and helper programs running concurrently. Right now minor bad coding and memory leaks are usually fixed by a restart, but what happens when restarting leads back to the same leaky state?

Clean code would be paramount, and I think people might be urged to move away from operating systems that lose responsiveness with time (e.g. Windowze) in favor of some variety of Linux. It will be interesting to watch.

[loosely_coupled @ Jun 3rd 2008 4:47AM]

That's exactly what goes to the heart of my question.

Why is everyone talking about replacing DRAM? Due to the non-volatility, I thought MRAM was supposed to be a superfast and power efficient replacement for FLASH?!? If you click on MRAM, even the last few articles on Engadget say the same thing --- That MRAM is a Flash memory replacement! WTF?

[kamu @ Jun 3rd 2008 4:57AM]

You make it sound as if restarts will be impossible! There will be options to drop the contents of RAM in the bios/OS/whatever and force a normal restart.

Or just use linux, eh eh? (Joke, don't start throwing out 'if my program was on linux.... blah blah wah wah')

Lets just pray Windows 7 will be something slick. (Haha)

[mattydread @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:00PM]

How does "almost ready" equate to waiting 7 more years? Ah well, that's just how it goes. What I'm really curious about is the security implications of RAM that doesn't clear out when a PC powers down. Atleast we have a while to sort that out.

[Phil @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:21PM]

I'm thinking a secure power down option on the bios for the security conscious that writes random data to the chip while shutting down. Everyone else could just leave it disabled and enjoy the whole instant boot thing.

[The B @ Jun 2nd 2008 4:51PM]

I don't think we'll be waiting seven years. I think it plans on being the top within seven years. Sounds more like a year to me...

[Jordan @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:04PM]

The retain memory part is what scares me a little bit. This will open up a whole new world of theoretical security flaws. So you password protect your computer, have encrypted drives, yada yada. if the memory stays even after the power is cut it makes it that much easier for a hacker (with physcial access of course) to just pop out the ram and do a dump of whatever is on it, gaining access to everything from encryption keys to passwords or anything else that happens to be residing in ram at that moment. It is not like this hasn't been done before, there is a trick in which you can freeze the ram chips and it will cause them to briefly hold their memory, and some white hacks thus managed to break a true-crypt encrypted drive by accessing the keys that were left in the ram.

[Mike10010100 @ Jun 2nd 2008 4:39PM]

Not to mention that state of the art bank vault I have at my house.

I haven't considered it, but with physical access, a blow torch, and a few explosives, they could get into it! Oh no!

Just use Blowfish to encrypt everything. (jk)

The Golden Rule of Computer Hacking:
If you have physical access to the computer, almost all security bets are off.

[watt @ Jun 4th 2008 11:14AM]

I find it amusing how clever marketing has turned the annoyance of ram going blank every time the power goes off into a must-have security feature.

[Max @ Jun 2nd 2008 7:43PM]

There are already security flaws regarding memory, this would just make it a lot easier :)

If you zap your RAM with liquid nitrogen within 2 minutes of shutting the computer off, the RAM will retain its bits long enough to stick it in another computer and do a dump of the contents. I wouldn't recommend it, but it is physically possible.

[sdwells @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:05PM]

the sooner they can push this tech out the better.

this will be great for laptops where battery life and instant access is what everyone wants.

with the ability to retain system information when the computer shuts down allowing for instant boot ups would be wonderful, when that happens it might mean i'd be willing to turn my computer off instead and save even more energy/battery life

[Jordan @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:07PM]

lol mattydread and jagster, you totally beat me to posting my response while i was typing it.

[Bob @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:17PM]

I'm sure there will be many utilities to 'wipe' the ram and do hard reboots. There will almost certainly have to be, but yes as far as security goes it will become more difficult and another process will probably come in to tighten security as a result. Technology wise though, this is an incredible advance that I'm looking forward too, especially as I do more and more of my computer in mobile platforms that I'd like to have 'instant access' to.

[Arthur @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:23PM]

Booearns Engadget....
The article says 1Gb, not 1GB... Big difference.

[Gibson @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:40PM]

Oh... wow, haha! Well, that's very disappointing.

[Jeremy K. @ Jun 2nd 2008 3:47PM]

All hail 128MB RAM!

[Stevenvdb @ Jun 2nd 2008 4:28PM]

Well, that's 128MB _per chip_. Similar density to what we typically get nowadays with DRAM. Since most Memory cards configure with around 8 chips per - well you can do the math.

Not a major step forward for capacity, but a significant stride for usability. ;)

[giyad @ Jun 2nd 2008 2:49PM]

ummm.... what about cost?

[Kyang @ Jun 2nd 2008 4:16PM]

Instant boot up?

That alone sounds awesome.

[A-Deca @ Jun 2nd 2008 3:38PM]

No worries, it will not be "istant", nor anywhere near.

It's just bad writing.

[Jordan @ Jun 2nd 2008 3:04PM]

However, despite security concerns I am excited to have instant on capabilities. My vista laptop takes forever to start up, even with minimal startup programs and services. I have gotten into the habbit of just hibernating my laptop instead of shutting it down most of the time cause at least then it starts up faster.

[lance @ Jun 2nd 2008 3:36PM]

I would imagine with the power of chips by 2015 everything can be in fully encrypted even in your ram without sacrificing . Of course, my imagination when I was 7 told be we would be flying the Millennium Falcon by 2000. So what do i know?

[Some Kid @ Jun 2nd 2008 3:36PM]

hahh!
apples are already so awesome that they dont need faster startup times

and besides, if toshiba is releasing it, apple wont use it

and if its ready by 2015, apple will be making sure it works untill 2020

ccchhhhmmm! apple, waiting for you guys to conclude that you can use blu-ray

but this is neccesary for pcs

[Phoenix @ Jun 2nd 2008 4:19PM]

Dude, I use macs in school on a regular basis, they have a definite start-up time

[Erik @ Jun 2nd 2008 4:48PM]

Some peoples' kids...

[Chris @ Jun 2nd 2008 3:40PM]

instant boot on a full power off isn't going to happen. more than half the current boot time is driver initialization, so unless this stuff helps your NIC negotiate a speed or your USB host to iterate devices and assign them all ID's on the bus then it's not going to help boot times all that much.

[thedesolate1 @ Jun 2nd 2008 4:00PM]

Thats a nice place for Virii to hide.. after shutdown. Its a scary thought that now boot disk enviornments can be infected.

[David @ Jun 2nd 2008 8:49PM]

IBM's MRAM technology has been licensed to TDK, who is expected to commercialize it in the same or shorter timeframe. So, there should be multiple competitors before long (which is good for consumers).