Samsung's PRAM chips hit mass production in June
By Ross Miller 
posted May 5th 2009 9:39PM
posted May 5th 2009 9:39PM
posted May 5th 2009 9:39PM
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I'll pee on your ram, alright.
you shuold've seen what i did to your motherboard. oh wait, computers?
Really do you not see these as Flash Drives?
SSD's flash replacement already here? And 30 times faster? wow.
"You want to know what gadgets and gizmos will first use these chips? "
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I swear if any of you say iPod im gonna....
"has 10x the lifespan of traditional flash memory"
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Kinda pointless as I have never seen memory gone bad.. and I have a 32MB yes all glorious 30 mins MP3player that still runs...
So if thing hing is that old it pretty much outlived its usefulness why do I need 10X lifespan?
AHAHA!!!
Your MP3 player isn't exactly the kind of application where you have to worry about write cycle limitations. More like something that's using flash for temp files or swap pages.
By the way, this article misreported that the chips will be 512MB. In 2005 Samsung fabricated 256Mbit chips, and it's looking like this is going to be a 512Mbit chip. So don't expected much beyond mobile and embedded applications for a few years, yet.
Paramter, Ross?
Hopefully the price isn't outrageous.
It's new... and only Samsung is producing it, do the math.
New+Sammy=Ouch
Got to wait a few years before we see an actual product, then another year or two before we see the price drop. Or so it was with Sony OLED TV. Except that we have yet to see a 40-inch OLED tv that has a price lower than a car.
@shinigami puh-leze sony calls their netbook "p" and charges few grands
at least this new piece of technology might revolutionize computer by eliminating data storage bottleneck
@kangbp.nyc
Like OLED revolutionized TVs and monitors 5 years ago? My grand-grand children will appreciate that, I think...
Sweet, I'll take 1TB.
So, 16384 chips?
Yes exactly. Now calculate the size of the HDD :)
really fuckin' big
"common guys its all ball bearings these days....do you need a refresher course?" I agree with Matt, if only Sammy is producing it then it will be priced higher than the balls on a giraffe. However for you Apple nuts Apple does have a tight relationship with Samsung so maybe it will be coming to a next gen Jesus phone near you
Ima start a religion revolving around a golden ram....
And the lord saith, thou shall zap the parameter RAM.
Given its non-volatile nature, I would mostly hope to see this implemented in portable devices.
i wish more companies were this innovative nowadays.
on topic.... too bad it's going to be incredibly expensive for the first 3 or 4 years.
Samsung Flash memory, going mass production in June?
Sounds like it'll be in the 3rd-Gen iPhone!
I remember hearing that the current iPhones can't do video because the constant reading and writing to the NAND flash memory wears it out prematurely. This flash memory solves that problem!
nope, maybe 4th or even 5th, but not the one that will come out in june
Kalson, how dumb are you? This is brand new, emerging technology that will not be in regular consumer class products for AT LEAST 3 years.
It wont be in your iPhone (or anything you own) for a long, long time.
You need to write to memory to play back video? Since when?
Yeah, but every single other phone has no problem with recording video. And Apple is supposed to be best at integrating their software with the hardware really well
poematik14, seems like your the stupid guy to me considering you missed the MASS PRODUCTION statement in the article.
Somehow you imagine that Mass Production in June = Consumer products in 3-years?
What era are you living in when you think that it takes 3-years for memory technology to make it to a consumer level. This technology probably won't be in the next iPhone, I can admit that, but you'll be the one with your foot in your mouth when consumer products have this technology next summer.
And to reply to Zydeco, when I said "do video", I meant "TAKE video". I figured you would've understood what I meant.
Mass production does not necessarily mean at a level or capacity suitable for consumer electronics. Even the speeds we're talking here are just potential, we aren't there yet. You might see your phone's OS on PRAM within a year or two, but you're not going to see it used for it's storage for quite some time after that, and even longer for memory cards, not to mention SSD. Remember how long ago MRAM went into mass production over at Freescale? See where it is now? No? See my point?
Hell, NAND entered mass production somewhere around 1989. See how long it took for it to mature and start reaching potential? Now they're already having issues getting past 32-34nm processes.
@Kalson, this chip is most likely going to be under 1GB. Good luck using that in an iPhone.
Wait, I get it. iPhone couldn't do copy-paste because of flash problems - too many cycles and the flash broke.
iSheep rule.
The good ol' days of Zapping the PRAM.
I don't even remember why we'd zap it.
Because Apple can't program any better then anyone else? Oops...
Umm I don't know why anyone hasn't said this but.
TELL ME TELL ME NOW!!
30 times faster? could it be the end of RAM as we know it if our storage is just as fast?
No because there will be a faster for of RAM out there. There is always something faster out there on the horizon. Always.
@Jon Doe
There has to be an eventual plateau. The laws of physics can only give so much.
But we have billions of years...
(so that makes sense)
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html?
@ msalivar: Wow. I'd never read that before; thanks!
PRAM is sweet! Although it isn't quite as fast as regular DRAM, it is non-volatile aka keeps state without power. It will be interesting to see applications for it in the short term before we can replace entire SSDs with it. Perhaps it's best used as a cache that sits between a normal harddrive and RAM, or it could be used to quickly move data to and from RAM when you want to "turn off" your computer. It would be like "hibernation" mode on a laptop except it could happen within a second.
BTW, Intel has been working on PRAM too, and they have an MLC version too like NAND flash.
All of Intel's PRAM work was spun off into Numonyx along with their NOR production. I am curious as to what their sources are on that article are, as they were *supposedly* supposed to be selling a 512MB chip back in 2008, but it's still vapor, while Numonyx has one in limited production.
I also wonder if they're not mistaking Mb(it) for MB(yte.)
So does this mean we'll have to push the PRAM a lot?
I like to prim and PRAM-a-lot.
damn.. by the time these things are affordable enough to even out my table legs, i will probably have 20 grand children
Phase Change Ram you say ??
*** FAP ***, *** FAP ***, *** FAP ***
Well, knowing Samsung, they're not going to tell anything until those chips have been on the market for like three months. Samsung is lazy on press releases and official data.
Robotics will take these by the handful .
Oh great. Before we could just remove their hard drives if they got a bit too rebellious. Now even that won't be good enough!
yayy pee
SSDs? MP3 players? NO!
512 Mb = 64 MB. These won't be ground-breaking for any consumer gadgets or SSDs for a very long time. However, for embedded electronics applications... very nice! Way to go Samsung!
is there any updates to this article ?.. we are already in June
where will Pram be used.. they called it the "Perfect Ram"