Samsung have just announced that they have started production of Phase-change Ram or PRAM. Manufactured at 60 nm, this chip comes 3 years after the first working prototype and a year late on initial planning. Destined for mobile devices at first due to its low energy consumption, this non-volatile memory could eventually replace NOR Flash memory in these devices.
What about SSDs? For the moment – and this will be the case for quite some time – it won’t compete with Flash NAND, because although PRAM is better in certain aspects, in particular because it lasts longer (100 million writes) and allows reprogramming of cells per bit, write speeds, though 7 to 10 times faster than NOR, are still significantly down on NAND, as is density.
