back to article Samsung overtakes Numonyx in PRAM race

Samsung is starting production of 512Mbit Phase-Change Memory (PRAM) giving it a lead on rival Numonyx's 128Mbit chip. Like Numonyx, the other PRAM developer, Samsung is optimistic that PRAM will replace NOR and NAND flash in mobile phones and similar battery-powered devices when those technologies run out of steam. It reckons …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. soft electrons
    WTF?

    another 512 Mb PRAM announcement

    It doesn't make sense if they are out to kill off their own NOR flash and NAND flash products. It is just some marketing announcement. Maybe they did fab a 60 nm 512 Mb chip that behaves the way it is said, but they can't be running this through their flash fabs. I mean now that Spansion went bankrupt, there is so much more demand for Numonyx and Samsung's NOR flash, they'd be silly to throw it all away for phase change memory. Taiwan's memory companies would love Samsung and Numonyx to abandon their NOR for PRAM, now that Spansion is struggling.

  2. brettmk

    Maybe they've learned a lesson about Disruptive Technology

    Perhaps Samsung and Numonyx have learned the lesson that so many hard drive manufacturers failed to learn, as detailed in Clayton Christensen'sThe Innovator's Dilemma.

    Smart companies will have to realize that there is an end-of-life for a given technology, and while they still want to serve the older technology to their customers, they must also forge into the new technology or they will be beaten by smaller newcomers and then it really won't matter that they didn't supplant their previous technology because somebody else will do it and put them out of business.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    is it for real?

    They promised before in 2007 the same thing. You never know when it's going to happen. Samsung must have tried every known memory technology just in case.

This topic is closed for new posts.