HP, Hynix, Collaborate to Commercialize Next Generation Memory Technology ReRAM

After years of development, Hewlett-Packard’s (News - Alert) memristor technology is now ready to move out of the labs. Hence, to commercialize memristor technology, South Korea’s Hynix Semiconductor Inc. has entered into a joint development agreement with Hewlett-Packard to utilize memristor technology in resistive random access memory (ReRAM), a next generation memory product. Under this deal, the two companies will jointly develop new materials and process integration to transfer the innovative “memristor” (memory resistor technology) from research and development (R&D) to commercial markets in the form of ReRAM products.

Media reports indicate that this deal is non-exclusive, giving HP rights to work with other interested parties in this space.

According to Hynix, ReRAM is a non-volatile memory product that holds potential to replace the Flash memory currently used in mobile phones and MP3 players and to serve as a universal storage medium. In other words, ReRAM memory can serve as Flash, DRAM or even a hard drive. The Korean semiconductor supplier plans to implement the technology in its R&D fab. However, according to media reports, end products using ReRAM memory are not due until the end of 2013.

Because memristor requires less energy to operate, it can retain information even when power is off. Plus, it is faster than present solid-state storage technologies. It was postulated to be the fourth basic circuit element by Prof. Leon Chua of UC Berkeley in 1971. The other three circuit elements being capacitor, resistor and inductor. And first transferred to practice by researchers in HP Labs, the company’s central research arm, in 2006

In a company statement, commented S.W. Park, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Hynix, “The memristor has storage capacity abilities many times greater than what competing technologies offer. By adopting this technology, Hynix expects to deliver new, energy efficient products to our customers.” “This agreement brings together HP’s core intellectual property and a first-rate supplier with the capacity to bring this innovation to market in world-class memory on a mass scale,” said Stan Williams, HP’s senior fellow and founding director of the Information and Quantum (News - Alert) Systems Laboratory at HP Labs. To strengthen its competitiveness as a leading memory company, Hynix plans to continue its R&D in various other next memory products, in addition to ReRAM. For instance, the Korean supplier is developing magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) technology jointly with Samsung (News - Alert) Electronics. And working with Grandis Inc. to develop another version of MRAM called spin-transfer torque RAM. Likewise, it is developing phase-change memory products with Ovonyx Inc.

Besides MRAM, other next generation memory technologies under development include ferroelectric RAM (News - Alert) (FeRAM) and phase-change. 

Other new players developing competing non-volatile memory technologies to replace Flash include 4DS Inc., Adesto Technologies and Unity Semiconductor.