BAE Systems 4 Mb C-RAM

Freescale MR2A16A 4 Mb MRAM

Does this mean phase change memory and magnetic RAM are now passé technologies?

Hi Plasma_Guy and the others!

None of the figures of this Ram is appalling alone. Capacity is low, speed has nothing exceptional. And remanent memories already exist. Radiation hardness is a joke, as every modern Ram is rad-hard: latchup doesn't exist any more, and bit losses are routinely corrected by codes.

Only the combination of these features are new. But as engineers have already learned to combine several memory technologies to sum their respective strengths, I don't believe the products you mention to become killers.

They should be better than existing ones at least in one parameter to become a brilliant success. Say, the same capacity as Dram but nonvolatile - and every computer puts Windows on them, even if they are slower than Dram, provided they are faster than a hard disk.

With just the unusual combination of features, they will stay in niche markets, just like Fram (ferroelectric, you know, with Pvdf insulators that keep their polarization) did. This is why Bae offers it to specific customers.

Unless, of course, big progress can be made on one feature or another.