- Ultraram seeks to unify storage and memory after decades of attempts
- Innovating the funding of the United Kingdom in 2023 gave Quinas Technology Critical Momentum
- Recognition at the top of flash memory
Pursuing a single memory capable of combining the persistence of flash storage with the speed of system memory has been underway for decades.
Several candidates, such as resistive memory, magnetoresist cells and Intel optanous SSDs, have tried to merge these roles, but none lasted in traditional markets.
However, a few years ago, attention moved to Ultraram, a technology initially designed at the University of Lancaster and then advanced by Quinas Technology, a startup based in the United Kingdom founded to transform research into a practical product.
From university research to prototype memory
The first studies described this technology as “a non-volatile memory with the potential to reach rapid storage of ultra-energy electrons”, which made it hope that it could fill the gap between the SSD and the RAM.
The momentum grew up in 2023 when Quinas Technology obtained a subsidy from ONNOVE UK, a government agency supporting the commercial sciences.
The price followed its recognition at the Flash Memory summit that same year, where the company won the most innovative flash memory start-up.
Funding has enabled Quinas to pass prototypes on a laboratory scale to nanometric devices, a key requirement if Ultraram must compete with the largest SSD and RAM products on the market.
For a national organization, to place confidence in the project and even to finance, he suggests that Utraram has progressed beyond speculative research.
This represents the type of “massive boost” required to start a serious scaling work, a missing step often in previous memory technologies that have wobbled before production.
Ultraram would combine rapid access times with ultra -lotive switching energy and storage storage potentially measured over the centuries.
It is also a technology whose longevity exceeds that of a storage of medium Flash SSD, but with lower energy demand.
He promises to match the speeds of reading and writing of the RAM while offering the non-voltility of Nand.
If such assertions are largely maintained, future computer devices could merge storage and memory into a single layer.
It will not only eliminate the traditional ditch between the SSD and the RAM, but it could also make the DIMM of conventional memory obsolete because it combines the speed of the dram with the persistence of the flash while removing the ineffectiveness that affects the two.
Unlike Dram, it does not require refreshing or destructive constant readings, and unlike flash, it does not need load pumps or wear levels.
However, industrial challenges should not be underestimated. Intel optanous technology has also promised a hybrid solution but was finally withdrawn due to poor adoption and high costs.
The manufacturing density comparable to the largest SSD today, as well as coherent yields below ten nanometers, remains uncertain.
These obstacles mean the idea of Ultraram as a universal memory is always closer to the aspiration than the guaranteed result.
Via gaming pc
