15 September 2005 -

Chalcogenide memory industry

BAE Systems Information and Electronic Warfare Systems in Manassas, VA received a $5m cost reimbursement contract modification to provide all resources necessary to perform tasks to achieve and overall objective of "producing a chalcogenide-based, radiation hardened for megabyte non-volatile memory,” to be complete by May 2007. The Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, NM issued the contract.

This will be a boost in the arm to players in what is known variously as phase change memory, programmable metallisation cell, Ovonic unified memory and resistance RAM,which appear to be accelerating their efforts.

Phase change chalcogenide memories appear to have moved from technology and basic cell development to early 64Mb test chips. Scaling has been shown to 65nm and it is thougt the technology will go to 22nm.

In early 2005 commentators noted a focus on testing and modelling of this memory technology. Ongoing issues include efforts to decrease current consumption during write.

Flash memory manufacturers who are developing phase change memory are discussing it as a successor to the current floating gate and nitride storage flash parts beyond the 45nm technology node in applications such as USB Keys,
digital camera phones, and flash cards.

There was also discussion of using it as a non-volatile RAM in applications such as cell phones which currently use both flash memory and RAM. Development continues on the chalcogenide switch cell, although test chips have yet to appear.