Australian-listed memory company 4DS has touted its ReRAM as being "read speed comparable" to DRAM.

At the heart of the advancement is a lack of error correction that needs to be applied to the ReRAM, 4DS said.

"Most emerging memory technologies have been reported to struggle with inherently high bit error rates -- frequently reading out incorrect data," the company said.

"In most cases, this is caused by large random cell current fluctuations. To reliably retrieve the original data, complex, time-consuming error correction techniques are required, which negatively affect read access time and thus cripple read speed."

4DS CEO Dr Guido Arnout told ZDNet the company was not close to production, but was focusing on creating a proof of concept.

"We'll license it, or be acquired so that a major company can bring the technology to market," Arnout said. "This development means we're well on the way to achieving that.

"As it stands today, 4DS has taken a giant step forward to proof of concept. Today's groundbreaking announcement will flush out potential industry partners."

In October last year, the company announced that it had developed 40-nanometre resistive random access memory (ReRAM) and raised AU$4 million.

Whereas flash memory uses electrical charge, ReRAM uses resistance to store bits with voltage applied to switch between different resistances.

Developed in partnership with HGST, 4DS said its Interface Switching ReRAM does not use filaments, and thus avoids physical limitations found in flash and other ReRAM while offering low power consumption.

Earlier this year, Intel took the wraps off its first Optane 3D XPoint storage product, which the hardware giant claimed could make database transactions up to 10 times faster.

For select workloads, Intel said it believes as much as 90 percent of DRAM can be replaced with Optane SSDs.

However, Arnout said on Tuesday that Intel's claims did not match what 4DS is looking at.

"The biggest contribution of Intel is that they ignited the race to storage class memory. But DRAM-like this isn't yet," he said.

"Intel claims it has low latency, but doesn't say how low. Our technology has matched DRAM's latency rating. They also state quite clearly how Optane memory is a new, separate technology to DRAM."

By: DocMemory
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