The objective of this bilateral collaboration is to continue the research and development of “Storage Class Memory” technology.

Storage Class Memory was advanced by IBM in 2008, and it is a new memory between DRAM and NAND Flash which can go an extra step in improving the processing power of computers.

In 2014 at the International Electron Devices Meeting, IBM proposed the potential of PCM as a storage memory device.

The following year in 2015 at the Symposia on VLSI Technology

and Circuits Macronix and IBM jointly presented a phase change memory sample using a 90 nm process capacity of 512Mb.

Macronix pointed our that decreasing costs is the biggest challenge in the development of PCM; however, multi-valued operations can be utilized to effectively reduce expenditures. Furthermore, multi-valued operations can also dramatically increase the capacity of memory, even though the performance of memory components will also be derogated. Nevertheless, samples made using contemporary manufacturing technologies already show excellent performance, and there is a good chance that PCM will be able to be used for storage level memory applications.

(TR/ Phil Sweeney)