back to article Numonyx bets on Phase-Change Memory

Flash memory supplier Numonyx is betting that servers will use Phase-Change Memory (PCM) to provide dramatic increases in performance for in-memory applications. It's signed a deal with Virident to supply NAND flash, and PCM for use as sub-DRAM tiers of storage in Virident's Green Gateway servers. The PCM could theoretically …

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  1. amanfromMars Silver badge

    If you talk a Good Show .... can you Back IT up and Walk the Walk too?

    It is a simple inescapable fact that to provide Presently, Future Memory, will capture All Markets and Cloud Control Leads. Unless you are enabled or provided with that, will you always be vulnerable to considerable market loss as investments are lost in legacy programs and systems superseded and rendered immediately redundant and a drain on resources rather than energising and leading with Future Virtualised Operating Systems and CyberIntelAIgent Networks InterNetworking which would be Generating Income and Investment Opprtunity.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is why I oppose the US bailout

    Look at DRAM as an example. What the DRAM makers need is something new to stimulate demand for their products. Instead governments bail them out:

    http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb09/7388

    So any new competitor into the market with something genuinely new, is competing against a government backed entrenched industry. Yet the new thing is exactly what's needed at this time.... all the government money does is to distort the market and preserve a status quo that needs to change.

    Hopefully flash makers won't be bailed out and this product will succeed.

  3. Lindsay Silver badge

    Unfortunate names

    Numonyx and Virident are two of the most unfortunate company names I've heard for a while.

  4. Chris Mellor

    Sent to me saying PCM is inferior

    Do you realize what you are saying?

    First, PCM writes a 1 Megabyte per second (based on inadvertent performance disclosures made public by certain Numonyx's officers), while modern DRAM writes at GIGABYTES per second (i.e, 3000x or so performance hit)!

    Second, despite Numonyx's claim, they DO NOT offer any PCM commercially (just try to buy a chip or 10,000, or even try to request a datasheet). PCM was supposed to be commercial by the end of 2007 (if we were to believe Numonyx's management, previously with Intel). Never happened. PCM will never be commercialized in volume, for obvious reasons - it is inferior to current Flash in terms of write speed, density, and costs. It probably has power consumption issues in write as well. It is a technoPonzi.

    ++++++

    Interesting view.... Chris.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is non-volatile memory really a good idea?

    Solid state disks - yes - fine. But non-volatile main memory seems a bad idea to me. Your computer crashes - you press reset - it's still crashed. You pull the plug, wait a week, plug it back in again and... it's still crashed. And how exactly do you restle control back from a rootkit, when even a reset and a bootable rescue CD isn't enough to ensure the virus isn't still memory-resident and in control?

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