One of the technology sectors in which ‘great ideas’ have popped up regularly is memory, where the search for a so called ‘universal memory’ seems to have been underway for almost as long as electronics technology has been around.
The current search is for a memory which is cheap, fast, non volatile and which doesn’t wear out. Phase change memory is one candidate, but work on this has been proceeding slowly since the 1960s and the concept still appears to be a distant prospect.
More recently, the carbon nanotube based NRAM approach of Nantero has gained some traction. But even this has taken more than a decade. In 2006, New Electronics suggested the technology was about to enter production, but the world is still waiting.
Nantero says it has more than 12 partners and customers in the consumer electronics, enterprise systems and semiconductor industries and has raised more than $110million. However, a recently signed agreement with Fujitsu may point to NRAM technology being ‘on the cusp’.
And this has prompted market researcher BCC Research to claim in a new report that NRAM will take off in 2018, with sales expected to reach $200m by 2023.
Despite all the enthusiasm, one thing which experience suggests when it comes to memory is not to hold your breath.
