Create storage device faster than flash memory

A group of students from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Jacobs School, part of the University of California at San Diego, USA, has developed a data storage device based on the technology of phase change memory.
The storage system capable of multiplying by seven the operating speed of conventional flash memory and named by scientists have dubbed Moneta, uses phase-change memory (PCM phase-change English memory), storage technologyemerging data that stores them in the crystal structure of a metal alloy called chalcogenide.
This technique is faster and easier to use than flash memory SSD, a technology that currently dominates the market. Thus, Moneta marks the latest advance in units of solid state storage (SSD) that, unlike hard drives, have no moving parts.
A revolutionary invention
Flash memory (SSD) today can be found in a wide range of consumer electronic products such as iPads and laptops. Although faster than the hard disk, flash memories are still too slow to achieve a modern data storage and meet the requirements of data analysis, especially in the area of ​​high performance computing, where the ability to screen in huge volumes of information quickly is critical.
This occurs, for example, when to store and analyze scientific data collected by environmental sensors, or even web searches through Google.
"As a society we can collect all this data very, very fast (much faster than we can analyze with conventional storage systems.) Storage devices based on phase-change memory solid state allow us to search through all these data, make sense, and extract useful information much faster. They have the potential to become something revolutionary, "said Steven Swanson, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California at San Diego and director of the Laboratory of Systems not - volatile (NVSL).
PCM memory chips
PRAM memory chips or PCM is a type of nonvolatile memory using chalcogenide glass. This material has the ability to transform from a crystalline state to an amorphous state by applying heat.
For data storage, memory chips transform the alloy of a crystalline state "zero" to an amorphous state "one" or vice versa, by applying heat through an electric current. To read the data, gives a smaller current, which is determined by the impedance and therefore the state in which the alloy is.
Moneta uses the first generation of chips Micron Technology PCM, and can read a lot of data at a maximum speed of 1.1 gigabytes per second and write data at speeds up to 371 megabytes per second.
In smaller accesses can be read at 327 megabytes per second and write at 91 megabytes per second, ie, two to seven times faster than current flash memory SSD.Moneta also provides lower latency for each operation and may reduce energy requirements in applications that require high data density.
A look at the computers of the future
Professor Steven Swanson hopes to build the second generation of Moneta storage device within the next six to nine months, for what he believes the technology could be ready for market launch in a few years, as improved technology underlying the current exchange phase.
Moreover, the development of this technology has also revealed a new challenge, Swanson explains: "We have found that you can build a storage device faster, but to actually make use of this system, you also have to change the software that runs it.Storage technologies have evolved over the past 40 years to improve the disks, and they are very, very slow. The design of storage systems that can fully benefit from technologies such as PCM memory requires a rethinking of virtually every aspect of how the software of a computer system manages and has access to data storage.Moneta gives us a clue about the future of storage systems, what is going to look, and gives us the opportunity to rethink the way it should respond to the design of computer systems. "
In addition to Swanson, the team responsible for Moneta includes Professor of Engineering and Computer Rajesh Gupta, who is also associate director of the Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology at the University of California at San Diego. The other student members of the team from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering include Ameen Akel, Adriana Caulfield, Todor Mollov, Arup De, Joel Coburn.
During these days, the system is being exhibited at the DAC meeting 2011, the world's leading technical conference and exhibition for electronic design automation, with the support of several industry partners, among which include Micron Technology, BEEcube and Xilinx. www.tendencias21.net