Laptops Arena

If I think well, Toshiba FeRam could be a interesting marketing name for a laptop. Unfortunately, we're supposed to be serious here, so we'll talk about the Ferroelectric RAM standard they've been working on for a few years now. Why talk about this in 2009, if it's an older technology? Well, a recent breakthrough makes Toshiba's FeRam a very interesting topic, as we're going to see right away...

I don't know about you, but FeRam sounds like something new to me, so here's some of the official mumbo-jumbo - "FeRAM combines the relatively fast operating characteristics of DRAM with flash memory's ability to retain data while powered off, attributes that continue to attract the attention of the semiconductor industry. No commercial devices are available, but many companies explore the technology rather rigorously."

Now, that we know all that, let's add that Toshiba claims the latest FeRam chips achieves 16MB storage capacity and an impressive read/write speed of 1.6GB per second. Back in 2006, Toshiba had a 4MB chip, able to reach a 200MBps data transfer speed, so we're talking about a serious progress here.

Despite the fact Toshiba will reveal more about the FeRam chip at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, the company has no plans to begin mass producing it just yet, simply because price remains one of the biggest obstacles, at least for now.

In the future, the Toshiba FeRam could be a great alternative for manufacturers in need of on-chip cache memory in their semiconductors, taking all a few steps forward, since the FeRam is also capable of holding its contents when powered off. Just think... the possibilities are endless!