Emerging Memories: Technologies and Trends attempts to provide background and a description of the basic technology, function and properties of emerging as well as discussing potentially suitable applications.

With the many recent announcements of emerging memory technology development from large semiconductor companies, and with several start-up companies pursuing emerging memory products, there is considerable interest in the new technology.

Semiconductor memories have been around now for 30 years. They have increased fourfold in density about every three years from less than 1K-bit in 1972 to more than 1G-bit in 2002. Applications which historically permitted the technology to trade-off speed and power, now demand both high speed and low power. While the price has dropped from one dollar per 100 bits too less than one dollar per 100 megabits, the production technology has become so complex and expensive that the average multi billion-dollar company can no longer afford it. The circuits have reached geometries so small that semiconductor theories are being altered and fundamental limits are foreseen. While there are undoubtedly many years of life left in the old memory technology, the world is currently taking a hard look at whether there might be a better way.

This book explores a range of new memory products and technologies. The concept for some of these memories has been around for years. A few completely new. Some involve materials that have been in volume production in other type of devices for some time. Ferro-electrics, for example, have been used in capacitors for more than 30 years. In addition to looking at using known devices and materials in novel ways, there are new technologies being investigated such as DNA memories, light memories, molecular memories, and carbon nanotube memories, as well as the new polymer memories which hold the potential for the significant manufacturing reduction.

Emerging Memories: Technologies and Trends is a useful reference for the professional engineer in the semiconductor industry

Contents

Acknowledgments. About the author. Introduction. 1. Ferroelectric RAMs. 2. Magnetic RAMs. 3. Non-Volatiles After Floating Gate. 4. After DRAM - Some Novel Contenders. 5. Memories after Silicon. Index.