Trends in Memory Technologies-Past and Future

摘要

The progress of information technology has led to great demand for semiconductors for application to servers, PCs, cellular phones, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), resulting in a steady annual memory bit growth rate exceeding 60 percent. Miniaturization and design technologies have made it possible for memories, especially dynamic RAM (DRAM), to integrate four times more bits in one chip every three years, and have significantly reduced bit-cost.Recently, however, with the expansion of memory application fields, the market has been requesting higher-value-added memory products featuring low-voltage operation, low power, and high functionality as benefits of these technologies. On the other hand, in recent memory development more attention seems to have been paid to the rapid growth of flash memory, recovering demand for static RAM (SRAM), and other emerging memories such as ferroelectric random access memory (FeRAM) and magnetic random access memory (MRAM), which are expected to be an "ultimate memory" in the future.