Moore's Law- PCM memory

When Phase Change Memory was in its development and infant stage, the biggest challenge that many developers faced was the production cost of PCM memory. Enterprise Storage Forum, indicated that in 2010, the cost to produce a PCM memory chip was approximately two times the cost than that of established memory chips like flash. The reason for this was "Due to poor economies of scale" and lack of research and development.

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 If we take into account of Moore's law, in which the price of transistors reduce by half every 20 months (approximately 2 years). Thereby, as of today, the cost to produce theoretically should have reduced by half.  However, this same concept applies to the established memory chips such as flash.

Hence, the reason companies such as IBM develop PCM memory chips, is not for the purpose that it is economically cheaper to produce than flash memory, rather it for the purpose that PCM memory is supposedly more efficient and effective than Flash.

Web links:
Enterprise Storage Forum

Can PCM mem. create a competitive advantage?

Now when a company views Phase Change memory from both selling and purchasing stand point, the company must ask, how does this product provide us with an edge on our competition?

Well lets take into account a basic model, called Porters five forces model. (shown to the left)

This model is quite simple to understand, in a nutshell, it contains 5 components of which each has an effect on a business. For example, lets say my company sells different types of juice and a New Vendor, who sells almost the same variety of juices, just opened a store right across the street from us. Now this Vendor has a force on me, I must either compete on my prices, by lowering them, or create better products than they do.

Now with this basic knowledge, how do we apply this concept to a company that wishes to either sell or buy PCM memory?

Well before we can jump into explaining why a company should buy or sell PCM memory, we need to know another model from Porter, called Porter's Four Competitive Strategies. It is quite self explanatory, if  company wants to out-do a rival company, it can reduce the prices of all of it goods and services, or a certain type of goods and services.

Now we can explain how a company can get a edge for selling or buying PCM memory.

Lets take on the perspective of a company selling PCM memory, IBM for example. They can make a competitive advantage through how their product is faster and more durable than that of their competitor's product, thereby IBM is differentiating their product. Also, with this new and "better" product, it maintains the rate of improvement in customer value; hence people are more willing to purchase PCM memory from IBM, than that of the competition.

Now from a customer perspective, if I were to but a PCM memory card from IBM, how does this provide a edge on my competition. If I have equipment which can process data 100 times faster than a flash, why would I want to purchase a flash drive. Also, if I am a data storage company, where I outsource my services of storing other peoples data, I must use many storage devices to contain all the data of my clients. With many storage devices comes repairing and replacement. Hence if PCM memory is more durable than the most current alternative, I would definitely purchase PCM memory.

Though my examples maybe exaggerated, we just want to invoke you to understand why PCM memory can or could be the future of the Data Storage industry.

Flash Drive memory vs. PCM memory

So what makes PCM memory more appealing than today's flash drives? Why should one bother obtain a PCM memory device, if a flash memory device ultimately does the same job?

The best answers to these questions are found through how PCM memory device functionality. We all know, now, how PCM memory stores data (See previous post), so how does this style of storage competes with today's Flash drives.

Firstly what makes a PCM memory device distinguishable to that of flash memory, is its ability to retain binary values within each cell, when integrating new values. While in flash memory, the purging of neighboring cells must occur in order to input new values. Thereby PCM memory can transfer data at a supposed 100 times faster than Flash.

Another advantage, of PCM memory has, is its extreme durability due to  lack of use of high voltage levels to shepherd electrons. Thus allowing PCM to be hypothetically rewritten over ten million times compared to the several thousands of time in a flash device.

These are just a few samples of why a PCM memory device is superior over flash.

Web Links:
Altered States - Economist
New Memory Chip- CIO

Phase Change materials to data?

As we know, Phase Change Memory is composed of glass like materials called "chalcogenides" and are classified as phase change materials or PCM. So the question is, how does switching from one phase to another store data?

Well first lets analyze the basic concept of data.

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• Data, is a collection of  values, measurements, or facts
• Data is not information until manipulated to a meaningful context
• Data is represented as bits (zeroes or ones)
• every group of 8-bits creates a byte- which then is further grouped into KiloBytes (1024 bytes) and MegaBytes (1024 KiloBytes) etc.

An common example of a typical device that stores data, are our flash drives.

Now how does a chalcogenide turn from physical object to a data unit. Well, in each cell of a memory chip chalcogenide are placed between two electrodes. One of which melts the chalcogenide creating a highly resistive material. At this point, since the material is highly resistive to electricity, when an electrical impulse is applied the resistive material.
at this point the cell would represent a binary digit of 0 (bit value of 0) and when this melted material is cooled and crystallized it would represent the binary digit of 1 (bit value of 1).

hence when a memory chip is collecting data, all it really needs to do is either is melt or crystallize the material to represent the data.


Web Links:
Altered States - Economist
New Memory Chip- CIO

Brief history and components of phase change memory.

Sodium Acetate heating pads

Though Phase Change Technology seems to be a new type of technology, it has actually been with us for quite some time. It only recently has been integrated into the data memory industry. Remember those sodium acetate heating pads for sore muscles? How about the heating, venting and air conditioning air ducts we commonly see in industrial buildings? Both utilize some sort of phase change technology, though being used for different applications.

Before we explain how Phase Change Technology applies to the memory data industry, we'll explain the properties/components which comprise "Phase Change Memory" device.

1. In Phase Change Memory, they utilize glass like materials called chalcogenide glass
2. Some common chalcogenide materials are, selenium and tellurium
3. utilizes thermal energy to alter between phases
4. thermal energy conducted through electrodes

now with this brief introduction to "phase change memory" we will further elaborate on this section further down the road.

Industrial Air ducts

Who we are and what is our Objective

So when we hear the term "Phase Change Memory", what immediately comes to mind? What do you think happens in a "Phase Change Memory"?

For one thing, the best analogy of how "Phase Change Memory" essentially works, is like melting ice. When ice, melts from solid state to liquid state, it  undergoes a phase change (from solid to liquid phase). This change from one state to another is pretty much the gist of how "Phase Change Memory" functions, hence the title (Phase Change).Though this is a perfect analogy of how this emerging technology essentially functions, it by no means represents the entire concept of how and the steps needed to perform this function.

Thus through this blog, several members of my group and myself will be elaborating on the history, functionality and application of "Phase Change Memory". Though keeping in mind how this technology is very new, our goal is to enlighten everybody about this new technology and how it may or may not have a massive effect in the data storage industry.

That mentioned, this blog is not only restraint to my research group, in fact we encourage the community to participate and express their opinions about this technology.

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