The Time Is Right (cont.)

DRAM technology needs new dielectric materials to allow adequate charge to be stored in the small areas of future devices. Neither technology faces an abrupt cut-off but unless some alternatives are developed, performance will fall steadily behind the full roadmap potential and the trend of continuous reduction in cost per bit will end. Newer memory technologies such as FeRAM and MRAM face even greater materials issues than DRAM and the experience of the semiconductor industry has been that such problems take longer than expected to solve.

Against this background of impending limits in conventional technology, the PMCm offers simplicity of concept leading to efficient manufacturing and the applications flexibility that will come from having one high-density memory cell that can be used for both dynamic and non-volatile applications.

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