256 kMRAM universal memory chip unveiled

Motorola Labs, partnering with the DigitalDNA Laboratories of the Semiconductor Products Sector, has disclosed an industry milestone in developing MRAM (magnetoresistive random access memory).

This universal memory has the potential to revolutionise the semiconductor memory market and offers an array of innovative, affordable memory-based applications for digital consumers worldwide.

Consumer benefits of this memory chip technology could be huge - eliminating pet peeves such as slow computer or cell phone startup, data loss, long waits for data to load and short battery life. For example, today's computers need to reload information into local memory from the hard disk drive when power is turned on. In the future this should not be necessary. MRAM is designed to allow the programs and data to remain in the local memory, even when the power is off.

Similarly, MRAM is expected to eliminate the delay we see today when we power our cell phones on and off.

Another key advantage of MRAM is that the technology is designed to allow the integration of multiple memory options within a chip.