back to article Drifting phases and noise in phase-change memory

Phase change memory cells can, well, change, over time. Once set in their crystalline or amorphous phases the material can drift towards the other state rendering the cell's resistance level less clear and weakening its ability to story a binary one or zero. PCM (Phase-Change Memory) is one of the candidate persistent storage …

  1. The_Idiot

    Is it April 01 already?

    TE BE (or not) TE BE

    Cryst - AMoron

  2. ibmzrl

    URL to Nature Communications paper

    To read the full paper visit: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150903/ncomms9181/full/ncomms9181.html

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    PCM is the new bubble memory or holographic disc storage

    Something that was hyped to death but either never worked or took so long to make work that they never reached the mainstream market, let alone lived up to the outsized hype.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "How this projection happens is not explained."

    See, there are these little elfs that live in a hollow tree, and they spend all day and all night making phase-change cookies that they stack up outside of the tree. Sometimes the chocolate chips they use are very sweet, sometimes they are very bitter, but one never knows which until a cookie is bitten and tasted. It's magic. Elfin, cookie-making magic.

  5. Ian Michael Gumby
    Thumb Up

    This is actually kinda cool

    solving problems one step at a time ....

    i wonder how much heat is generated when under heavy i/o.

    1. ibmzrl

      Re: This is actually kinda cool

      The heat generated is mainly related to the write power.

      Projection allows smaller volumes of phase-change material, because it limits the high resistance-state of the cell.

      Smaller volumes of phase-change material lead to a reduction in write power and thus in a reduction of heat generated.

      So, it may be that a memory cell design with a projection layer generates less heat than one without a projection layer. - Wabe W. Koelmans

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