La mémoire Flash a beau avoir rencontré un succès planétaire et avoir rendu possibles la conception de produits jamais vu auparavant, elle n'est pas exempte de défaut. Au premier rang desquels : la lenteur en écriture, et la fiabilité. Ces deux défauts sont minimisés par une évolution mise au point par Freescale : la mémoire Flash à nanocristaux.
 
Une cellule de mémoire Flash classique est formée de grilles faites d'une fine couche de silicium polycristallin. Dans une cellule de à nanocristaux, ces grilles sont constituées d'un ensemble de billes de silicium monocristallin d'échelle nanométrique. Et c'est cela qui confère à cette mémoire ces avantages clés.
 
Pour une même taille de cellule, la quantité de matière retenant la charge électrique est moindre que dans une mémoire classique. Grâce à cela, la quantité d'énergie nécessaire à écrire l'information en mémorie est moindre, et cela se traduit par une vitesse d'écriture 10x supérieure (de l'ordre de 100 µs).  
 
Avec une finesse de gravure de 90 nm, chaque grille d'une cellule à nanocristaux est constituée d'environ 200 nanoparticules de silicium, chacune étant isolée de ses voisines. Ainsi, si l'une d'elles commencent à être oxydée, ses voisines ne sont pas touchées. Au contraire, dans une cellule classique, si un point de la grille se trouve oxydé, la fuite de courant est générale et toute la cellule devient incapable de stocker une charge électrique. La mémoire à nanocristaux perd cependant cet avantage à mesure que la finesse de gravure augmente. À 65 nm, chaque grille ne serait plus composée que de 100 nanocristaux, à 45 nm, d'encore moins.
 
FreeScale vient de commencer à utiliser cette technologie dans deux nouveaux microntrôleurs, et il serait logique qu'on la voit s'étendre à de nombreuses autres puces, si ses bienfaits théoriques se retrouvent en pratique, et si FreeScale parvient à la miniaturiser pour obtenir des capacités compétitives. Notons que Freescale est loin d'être la seule société intéressée par cette technique, Numonyx, IBM et ST Micro travaillant notamment sur le sujet.

The Association of People who Stockpile Digital Recordings of the Tasteful Expression of the Human Form, or APSDRTEHF (they are rumored to be voting on a new name in the near future), received word of an amazing feat of storage engineering today.  Toshiba is presenting a paper at the 2010 Magnetic Recording Conference in San Diego today outlining their research and successful implementation of a new technology that can cram a staggering 2.5 terabits of information into a single square inch of platter real estate.  For the layman, that's over 300GB of information stored on a surface the size of a postage stamp.
 
This impressive feat is made possible by using an extremely dense track of 17nm self-assembling polymer dots, with each dot representing a single bit.  Toshiba claims that this is the first time anyone has been able to control a read/write head over such a material, but at the same time they have not shown that they can actually read or write data to the material just yet.
 
Skeptics out there (namely other hard drive companies), claim that the process Toshiba is showing off today is not viable for mass production any time soon.  They say that the tools to produce such a monster cost effectively simply do not exist yet, and they are looking to other methods such as "heat-assisted magnetic recording" to increase aerial density in the mean time.
 
To leave you with some food for thought, a standard 3.5" hard drive platter has approximately 8.4 square inches of recordable area per side, and modern high capacity drives generally have three to five platters in them. With the new technology announced today, that could potentially yield around 25TB of storage capacity in a single 3.5" drive.  No exact word was given as to a timeframe for such technology, but Toshiba speculates it could make it to market sometime in 2013.  From a slightly different angle, if the current hard drive capacity trend line continues unabated we should be seeing drives of this capacity sometime in 2015 or 2016, but who are we to doubt a corporate time-to-market estimate. S|A

Researcher develop a simpler, faster and more efficient MRAM using half-way magnetic flipping
 
Chinese researchers have shown that magnetic memory (MRAM), logic and sensor cells can be made faster and more energy efficient by using an electric, not magnetic, field to flip the magnetization of the sensing layer only about halfway, rather than completely to the opposite direction.
 
The new cell requires only two layers (traditional MRAM requires three or more layers) - and so hopefully will be easier and cheaper to make. The design is a simple thin-layer sandwich of two different materials, each of which has very different magnetic and electrical properties. Applying a voltage to the ferroelectric layer switches its polarization in a way that starts to change the magnetic orientation of the adjacent ferromagnetic layer. This partial change alters the electrical resistance of the entire stack enough to indicate whether the cell is storing a "0" or a "1" data bit.

Après Seagate et Western Digital, c’est au tour du constructeur Hitachi de dévoiler ses premiers disques durs d’une capacité de 3 To. Au format 3,5 pouces, le Deskstar 7K3000 fonctionne à 7200 tours par minute, embarque 64 Mo de mémoire tampon et bénéficie d’une interface SATA 6 Gbps. Il est disponible dans des capacités de 1,5 To, 2 To et 3 To.
 
Hitachi lance également le Deskstar 5K3000, un disque dur disponible dans des capacités de 1 To, 2 To et 3 To. Embarquant 32 Mo de mémoire tampon, il utilise une interface SATA 6 Gbps et bénéficie de la technologie Coolspin permettant de diminuer la vitesse de rotation des plateaux à un peu plus de 5000 tours par minute, ce qui le rend plus silencieux et plus économe en énergie que son grand frère.

Des chercheurs de l’Université de Kyoto et de l’Institut de Technologie de Tokyo, en partenariat avec Hitachi et la New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) au Japon, ont annoncé avoir mis au point une nouvelle technique permettant d’augmenter de manière sensible la densité d’informations stockées par un média magnétique, tel que les plateaux de nos disques durs.
3,9 Tbits par pouce carré
 
En utilisant des polymères capables de s'arranger automatiquement afin de créer des structures magnétiques de seulement 12 nm, ces chercheurs sont parvenus à atteindre une densité de 3,9 Tbits par pouce carré, soit près de huit fois la densité actuelle des disques durs les plus récents. En pratique, une fois le procédé de fabrication industrialisé, des plateaux bénéficiant d’une telle densité de stockage pourraient permettre la mise au point de disques durs 3,5 pouces d’une capacité de 24 To, ou de modèles au format 2,5 pouces de 8 To. Bien entendu, de tels disques durs ne sont pas attendus avant plusieurs années…
 
Cette nouvelle technologie devrait être présentée lors du congrès Material Research Society qui se tiendra du 29 novembre au 3 décembre prochain à Boston.

Manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs) will continue to boost capacities of their products next year and by the end of 2011 hard drives with whopping 4TB capacities may emerge, according to an analyst. In order to build 4TB  HDDs, manufacturers will have to create new platters with considerably higher than 530Gb/inch2 areal density or make drives with five platters, like Hitachi does.
 
At present 3TB hard drive from Western Digital utilizes four 750GB platters with 530Gb/inch2 areal density. A four platter drive with 4TB capacity will require four 1TB platters with even higher density, something that is not easy to achieve. Moreover, initially platters with higher areal density will be used in 2.5" or 2.5" external drives.
 
"Besides widespread use of desktop storage technology enabling 3TB storage capacity earlier in the year we might see higher desktop capacities later in the year (depending upon the slowing rate of areal density increases). At the very least we will probably see 4TB or higher external storage with small additional increase in areal density and using 5 [platters]. We expect that 2.5" external storage will move beyond the 2TB available today to as high as 3TB and laptop 2.5" drives with 1.5- 2.0TB could happen in the second half of 2011 or early in 2012. Should Toshiba wish to push the storage capacities of 1.8" HDDs it would be possible to make one of these with 1 TB storage capacity," said Thomas M. Coughlin, the founder of Coughlin Associates market research firm that tracks HDDs, in a special report cited by Storage Newsletter web-site.
 
Given the fact that only newer computers will be compatible with hard drives larger than 2.2TBs, the upgrade market of hard disk drives will likely stagnate a bit next year as fewer consumers will be interested in top-of-the-range HDDs. As a result, it is unlikely that manufacturers will attempt to deliver high capacity points at any cost.
 
It is noteworthy that hard drives of 2011-2012 timeframes will be the last traditional drives as going forward new recording methodologies will be implemented to boost capacities.
 
"Beyond 2011 traditional perpendicular recording advances become more difficult and dual stage actuator HDDs or drives for some special applications using what is called shingle writing could provide even higher areal densities while the HDD industry sorts out whether HAMR or patterned media are the choice for more significant and multi-generational HDD areal density advances," said Mr. Coughlin.

SAN FRANCISCO - Spin torque MRAM is a nonvolatile memory technology said to  combine high speed operations with low power.
 
During the International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) here, IBM, Samsung and the Hynix-Grandis duo presented papers on the topic. Spin torque MRAM, or STT RAM, is a next-generation MRAM technology.
 
At IEDM, the IBM-MagIC MRAM Alliance-the joint MRAM venture between IBM and TDK Corp.-disclosed details of its technology-a perpendicular spin torque MRAM. ''We report data from 4-kbit spin torque MRAM arrays using tunnel junctions (TJs) with magnetization perpendicular to the wafer plane,'' according to the paper.
 
''We show for the first time the switching distribution of perpendicular spin torque junctions,'' according to the paper. ''The percentage switching voltage width, alpha(Vc)/<Vc> = 4.4 percent, is sufficient to yield a 64-Mb chip,'' according to the paper.
 
''Furthermore we report switching probability curves down to error probabilities of 5x10-9 per pulse which do not show the anomalous switching seen in previous studies of in-plane magnetized bits,'' according to the paper. ''We have examined in detail the requirements for a 64 Mb MRAM in 90-nm technology with 2-bit error correction code (ECC). Write currents need to be limited to of order 350 µA in order to keep the cell size reasonable.''
 
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is taking another approach. ''Feasibility of STT-MRAM as next generation nonvolatile memory has been tested for the replacement of DRAM and NOR flash,'' according to Samsung.
 
''We report that the cell characteristics of on-axis STT-MRAM with 6 ~ 8F2 are similar to those of off-axis STT-MRAM with 12 ~ 16F2. In addition, we suggest a novel MTJ (magnetic tunnel junction) with the operation current density of 0.8 MA/cm2,'' according to the company. ''These results open a way to scale STT-MRAM down to sub-30-nm technology node using present technology. By further material engineering of ferromagnetic electrode and MTJ structure design, the usage of present technology could be extended down to sub-20-nm node.''
 
The team of Hynix Semiconductor Inc. and Grandis Inc. are taking another approach. ''A compact STT (spin-Transfer Torque)-RAM with a 14F2 cell was integrated using modified DRAM processes at the 54-nm technology node,'' according to the firms. 'The basic switching performance (RH and R-V) of the MTJs and current drivability of the access transistors were characterized at the single bit cell level.''
 
Unlike IBM, Hynix and Grandis ''used in-plane MTJs rather than PMA (perpendicular magnetic anisoatropy) MTJs. Although many research groups have tried to develop productive PMA MTJs, the PMA MTJ still has several technical hurdles such as difficult PMA  film growth and high damping constant. Also, we do not yet have confidence that PMA MTJs can have better scalability than in-plane MTJs in terms of thermal stability and switching current.''

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) on Thursday announced a series of new single-platter 2.5" hard disk drives (HDD) that are based on the sixth-generation perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) platters. The latter feature higher areal density than currently available drives and can thus enable 3.5" hard drives with 4TB or even 5TB capacities.
 
Hitachi Travelstar Z5K500 hard disk drive comes in 2.5" form-factor and is just 7mm thick. The most important thing about this drive is that it is based on one 500GB sixth-generation PMR platter with 636Gb/inch2 areal density. The platters themselves will eventually enable 2.5" drives with 1TB or 1.5TB capacities with two or three platters inside. Moreover, 3.5" platters with 636Gb/inch2 areal density will have capacity of around 1TB, which means that it will be possible to create 4TB hard drives with four platters or even 5TB HDDs with five platters in the next twelve month, which is in line with expectations by analysts.  
 
The Travelstar Z5K family of hard drives offers 500GB, 320GB, 250GB capacities, 5400rpm spindle speed, 8MB cache buffer, Serial ATA-300 interface. The manufacturer declares 5.5ms average latency, 13ms average read seek time, 1.8W maximum power consumption during seek and 0.55W minimum power consumption in idle mode.
 
“As the industry’s only 500GB one disk product and the only second generation 7mm product family, Hitachi continues to push the bar higher, and is leading the shift from 9.5mm 2.5" drives to 7mm 2.5" drives across a broad range of market segments," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at Hitachi GST.
 
According to IDC, 500GB, mobile 2.5" hard drives represent 22% of the market today, with this capacity growing 42% annually from 2010 to 2013. Offered in a complete family of 500GB, 320GB and 250GB, which satisfies more than 77% of today’s capacity needs in the portable PC market, these drives are the industry’s only second-generation family of 5400rpm 7mm z-height drives, which are designed as a direct replacement for standard 2.5", 9.5mm drives in everything from external drives to laptops, netbooks and blade servers. All this combined puts the new Hitachi Travelstar Z5K500 drive family in the industry sweet spot of opportunity in the mobile 2.5" market, according to the company.
 
“Ultra thin and light devices are, without argument, a growing trend. In order for these innovative designs to live up to their true potential, they need rugged, reliable high-capacity hard drives that can withstand the rigors of a portable environment and satisfy the storage demands of their end users, and Hitachi continues to deliver,” added Mr. Collins.
 
All Hitachi Z-series 7mm drives feature common connectors and mounting points for standard integration into existing systems. The Travelstar Z5K500 drive family will also be offered in enhanced availability (EA) models in capacities of 320GB and 500GB, which are designed and fine-tuned for applications needing “always-on” protection in 24x7, low transaction environments including blade servers, network routers, video surveillance and compact RAID systems.  
 
The Travelstar Z5K500 family will be shipping to select distributors in December.

 
OCZ vient d’annoncer la nouvelle version de son SSD PCI-Express Z-Drive, le R3. Disponibles en version 300, 600 et 1200 Go, les R3 intègrent en fait pas moins de 4 contrôleurs SandForce SF-1565 ce qui lui permet d’afficher des débits de 1 Go /s et 900 Mo /s en lecture et écriture séquentielle et 135 000 IOPS en écritures aléatoires de 4 Ko. En version P84, les Z-Drive R3 utilisent de la MLC mais OCZ indique que des déclinaisons SLC et eMLC sont également possibles.
 

 
Point intéressant, OCZ précise que sa nouvelle technologie VCA (Virtualized Controller Architecture) permet de combiner plusieurs contrôleurs tout en conservant un accès aux technologies SMART et TRIM.

Future Electronics to sell Everspin's MRAM in Asia and Japan
 
EverSpin logoEverspin and Future Electronics expanded their distribution agreement to include Asia and Japan. In addition, Everspin is elevated to "Registered Supplier" status. This places Everspin's MRAM at the top of the list of solutions for a wide range of markets including enterprise storage, datacom/telecom, industrial automation, transportation, gaming and energy management.

Avec cette acquisition, Western Digital va donc vendre un disque dur sur deux dans le monde !

Au CeBIT, Samsung a montré un disque particulier : d'une capacité de 2 To, il se contentait de deux plateaux. Cette densité inédite — les meilleurs disques durs se limitent à 750 Go — devrait permettre à Samsung de proposer des modèles de 4 To dans le futur. Le disque dur est un des futurs Ecogreen F6 de Samsung, il tourne donc à 5 400 tpm, propose 32 Mo de cache et utilise une interface SATA 6 gigabits/s ici totalement inutile, le disque dur n'étant même pas capable de saturer réellement une interface SATA 1,5 gigabit/s.
 
En plus de plateaux de 3,5 pouces de 1 To, Samsung a annoncé un SpinPoint M8 de 1 To qui utilise deux plateaux de 500 Go, comme les derniers modèles de Seagate. La sortie de ce modèle est prévue en avril, avec une interface SATA 3 gigabits/s, 8 Mo de cache et une vitesse de rotation de 5 400 tpm. Pour ceux qui ont besoin de stockage dans un PC portable, ce disque dur devrait être intéressant : l'épaisseur de 9,5 mm est plus standard que les 12,5 mm d'une partie des disques durs de grande capacité.

(Nanowerk News) Magnetic Random Access Memories (MRAM) are the most important new modules on the market of computer storage devices. Like the well known USB-sticks, they store information into static memory, but MRAM offer short access times and unlimited writing properties. Commercial MRAMs have been on the market since 2005. They are, however, still slower than the competitors they have among the volatile storage media.
 
An invention made by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) changes this situation: A special chip connection, in association with dynamic triggering of the component, reduces the response from - so far - 2 ns to below 500 ps.  This corresponds to a data rate of up to 2 GBit (instead of the approx. 400 MBit so far)( Cela correspond à un taux de données allant jusqu'à 2 Gbits/s (au lieu de env. 400 Mbits/s à ce jour)). Power consumption and the thermal load will be reduced, as well as the bit error rate. The European patent is just being granted this spring; the US patent was already granted in 2010. An industrial partner for further development and manufacturing such MRAMs under licence is still being searched for. arf pas cool ça !!
 

Electron-microscopic recording of an MRAM storage cell
 
Fast computer storage chips like DRAM and SRAM (Dynamic and Static Random Access Memory) which are commonly used today, have one decisive disadvantage: in the case of an interruption of the power supply, the information stored on them is irrevocably lost. The MRAM promises to put an end to this. In the MRAM, the digital information is not stored in the form of an electric charge, but via the magnetic alignment of storage cells (magnetic spins). MRAMs are very universal storage chips because they allow - in addition to the non-volatile information storage - also faster access, a high integration density and an unlimited number of writing and reading cycles.
 
However, the current MRAM models are not yet fast enough to outperform the best competitors. The time for programming a magnetic bit amounts to approx. 2 ns. Whoever wants to speed this up, reaches certain limits which have something to do with the fundamental physical properties of magnetic storage cells: during the programming process, not only the desired storage cell is magnetically excited, but also a large number of other cells. These excitations – the so-called magnetic ringing – are only slightly attenuated, their decay can take up to approx. 2 ns, and during this time, no other cell of the MRAM chip can be programmed.
 
As a result, the maximum clock rate of MRAM is, so far, limited to approx. 400 MHz. Until now, all experiments made to increase the velocity have led to intolerable write errors. Now, PTB scientists have optimized the MRAM design and integrated the so-called ballistic bit triggering which has also been developed at PTB. Here, the magnetic pulses which serve for the programming are selected in such a skilful way that the other cells in the MRAM are hardly magnetically excited at all. The pulse ensures that the magnetization of a cell which is to be switched performs half a precision rotation (180°), while a cell whose storage state is to remain unchanged performs a complete precision rotation (360°). In both cases, the magnetization is in the state of equilibrium after the magnetic pulse has decayed, and magnetic excitations do not occur any more.
 
This optimal bit triggering also works with ultra-short switching pulses with a duration below 500 ps. The maximum clock rates of the MRAM are, therefore, above 2 GHz. In addition, several bits can be programmed at the same time which would allow the effective write rate per bit to be increased again by more than one order. This invention allows clock rates to be achieved with MRAM which can compete with those of the fastest volatile storage components.
 
Source: Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)

Seagate paiera à Samsung 1,375 milliards de $ dont la moitié en action. Samsung possédera alors environ 9,6% de Seagate.