Embedded Memory: The Future of Emerging Memories
Feng-Ming Lee · 2019
NAND is the dominant memory technologies currently in use. For NAND flash, with the migration from 2D to 3D, is projected to go from today's announced 96 layers to over 500 layers over the next few years. Decreasing the price of conventional memory and increasing the memory capacity, make it hard for emerging memories to replace them. In this situation, where will emerging memories gain a foothold?Among emerging memories, MRAM is very fast, has write and read speeds that are very close to DRAM and has very high endurance. All the major foundries (including TSMC, UMC, Samsung and Global Foundries) have teamed up with MRAM companies to make embedded products using MRAM. There are many other storage and other systems that are using a bit of MRAM to improve overall system performance. MRAM will be particularly useful where power consumption is an issue in IoT devices.For PCM, Intel's Optane memory is to be available in DIMM form for populating computer and server memory buses and will be available in 2019. This is supposed to provide improved performance for Intel servers. Besides MRAM and PCM, RRAM could also compete against current memories, such as: split gate, used in embedded applications. The standalone market for memory chips will provide some of the projected volume of emerging memories, but embedded applications, particularly for mobile and AI application, will likely be the big drivers for embedded emerging non-volatile memory. In conclusion, in this talk, we will give an overview of current status and future vision of emerging memory, especially for MRAM, RRAM and PCM.