In our previous blog regarding Micron and Sony’s ReRAM program, we had also identified IMEC’s program in exploring some of the potential features of the technology. Today it is reported that one of the 17 papers being presented this week by IMEC at the 2011 IEEE Electron Devices Meeting includes a fully-functioned HfO2-based ReRAM cell with an area of less than 10x10nm.
The press release also points to the general concern within the industry that the increased complexity in continuing to scale today’s high-volume memory technologies is one of the motivations for the research in new memory cell technologies.
In our blog of May 2 titled "Is the Semiconductor ‘Memory Wall’ Finally Crumbling?", we observed that barriers also loom ahead for logic designs for a different set of reasons. The manufacturing challenges of 3D transistors and the ability to cost-effectively achieve the performance potential of multi-core processors are all likely to be no less challenging that those related to new and emerging memory technologies.
To increase the sense of urgency even while these two major semiconductor industry elements of memory and logic are preparing to meet those manufacturing challenges, the fundamental target applications for the development of new memory technologies is rapidly shifting from the single focus of the desktop PC era toward a much more diversified set of OEM expectations. The completed picture includes not only the diverse and still-evolving expectations of server and data storage applications we previously discussed, but the equally challenging trend toward providing mobile solutions for any data collection or personal computing application.
This rapidly-evolving market environment obsoletes a widely-held view of the past 20 years’ history of memory technologies that any new memory product has to compete with an existing high-volume product on a cost-per-bit basis before it will ever be accepted. Regardless of the technology, the true equation has always been that the competition is based on both cost and performance, but the single-application focus on desktop PCs for the past decade effectively masked any support for a wider set of memory performance attributes.
While IMEC’s paper does not necessarily validate one memory technology over all other contenders, the concluding sentence of the press release certainly demonstrates the breadth of interest in new and emerging memory technologies: “These results were obtained in cooperation with IMEC’s key partners in its core CMOS programs Globalfoundries, INTEL, Micron, Panasonic, Samsung, TSMC, Elpida, Hynix, Fujitsu and Sony.”
Contact us (bobm@convergentsemiconductors.com) for information for Convergent Semiconductors’ hot-topic report on ReRAM regarding applications, challenges and infrastructure opportunities.
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