Intel and Numonyx, the chipmaker's flash memory joint venture with STMicroelectonics, have released details on what the companies hope will be a breakthrough in the development of phase-change memory (PCM). Specifically, the companies developed a new manufacturing process that would allow stacking several memory/selector layers atop each other so memory can be packed more densely in a given volume.

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That does seem like a promissing technology indeed! SSDs as they are today are already getting quite interesting (Intel's 34nm X25-m for instance). This will be even better.

good news indeed if it can be incorporate into affordable unit, then maybe finally we can get cheap ssds.

Although it will take time to bring it to average users, the technology they use is quite interesting.

I've been busy trying to get every bit of news I can about these new types of memory. That we have come so far is simply amazing to me.

The merging of HDD/SSD with ram would be absolutely monumental to say the least. I can not wait for the day to come when this is possible, everything would run so fast...

I was just thinking the same thing, Colonel Lance... Imagine systems with no hard drive architecture as it exists now, just a processor and a ram disk that is instant on and fast as lightning... Add in the optimization and simplification you could do in the entire computing process, and the power consumption savings, and there could be an interesting evolution on the horizon for computing (particularly mobile platforms). Conventional HDD/SSD drives may end up relegated to the roles of mass archiving, offline or portable storage, or just another backup method.

yeah if this goes onto be something substantial then no more booting woes,be it windows boot or firefox cold starts :|

I love yet hate seeing news bits like this. It makes me super excited about future technology, but at the same time, I just want to see it implemented already!

long way off huh? who would be surprised if they had that technology working right now and aren't gonna release it until the slow advancement phases has made their potential profit margins

Sounds great. More memory capacity is always good. But what about motherboard support and cost?

More of a chemistry problem than a physics problem. Bravo.

Yeah, I wonder what the cost of devices that sport this new technology will be. Oh, and to the Staff, isn't Paragraph 2, Line 2 supposed to say "...minimum of dye space."

This is pretty interesting stuff. There seem to be quite a few new things upon the horizon. USB 3.0, Light Peak, Phase Change Memory...I hope I don't get left out in the cold when I buy a computer soon, only to find out that these new technologies are in computers Only a couple years later. At least the article seems to imply years before Phase Change memory is available.

Yes, a long time to go. What I see from using non-volatile high speed memory, the first thing, is faster wake and sleep state transitions for PCs. The ACPI spec acknowledges that the only method to store state data for various peripheral devices distinct from CPU and memory is to use the hard disk or other selected mass storage devices. Primarily this method meant that memory would increase overtime in unpredictably high capacities and that more and more state information would be stored and written to the hard disk in one way or another, but perhaps using a type of memory that would stay consistent despite memory's ubiquitous volatile nature would allow nothing more than perhaps the moving of a few small data structures; the operating system could resume at substantially more responsive speeds. On the matter of merging the physical concept today that conveys John von Neumann's idea, there are already similar systems on several ASIC devices in terms of addressing. In contrast to merging the entire two major modular designs of the componentry, those ASICs simply merge memory and storage in the same address space; The physical merging of these two components in my views would introduce a larger more expansive relationship with the application layer and the driver layer, relinquishing the isolating design of interfacing with the common serial controller and through the hard disk's controller.

This sounds awesome, I just hope that the prices of these when they do come out isn't insanely high like imo SSDs are. Oh well I guess, technology prices fall fast and hard usually.

In a perfectly implemented system where RAM and storage are the same, there would theoretically only a need to have a very small section that would imprint the current data within the processing core when a system was shut off - it could be virtually instantaneous on and off if the memory is persistent.

But, therein lies the rub... In order for a system like that to work properly, applications will have to do very effective housekeeping on their own resources. A memory leak in a program today just usually results in your RAM getting packed full and slowing your system down, until the program crashes (or the system does). A memory leak in a program on a computer where the memory is also the storage could lead to a massive amount of garbage being stored in your persistent storage space, effectively ballooning up until there is no room left to operate. Either the programs will have to be very efficient, or a larger overhead monitoring system will have to be in place to prevent runaway memory leaks - either of those situations could potentially slow down the lightning quick potential of an integrated system.

very nice bigger ram in the same space i like this.

This is quite promising since if they can get it to market soon enough it should help drive down the costs for SSD's which we all will appreciate I'm sure. :)

It is always nice to see what the distant future holds. Sounds like it is still some time before we see memory of this caliber.

I can't wait until I can select how much RAM I can have by dragging a slider on a partition manager XD