According to the source, behind closed doors at the IEDM 2023 conference held in December, Micron announced the development and use of a large-capacity FeRAM memory crystal. FeRAM memories have been in production for about 20 years, but they are generally low-capacity chips between 8 and 128 Mbit. Against this background, Micron’s development strikes the imagination with its crystal capacity of 32 GB, which can be compared with the birth of new permanent memory.

FeRAM memory operates faster than NAND memory. According to this indicator, DRAM is approaching RAM. At the same time, FeRAM chips, like other non-volatile memories, store charge in cells without even providing power to them. Additionally, FeRAM memory is more resistant to wear, making it better for use in data storage devices. Finally, FeRAM is not afraid of radiation, magnetic fields and sudden temperature increases; This makes it inevitable to find it in machine tools, tools and on-board equipment in the aerospace industry.

Despite its numerous advantages, FeRAM memory has become a mass phenomenon. NAND mass memory, with its very low density of cells and huge capacity crystals, does not give FeRAM a chance to enter the data storage space. However, even the 3D XPoint (Intel Optane brand) memory developed by Micron together with Intel could not achieve this. The availability and cheapness of NAND played a negative role in the sad fate of this seemingly promising non-volatile memory.

It’s easy to imagine that Micron’s unofficial announcement of its 32 Gbit FeRAM chip could be considered a landmark event. The Blocks & Files site provides a fragment of the image of the document from the presentation of the memory chip, which is not publicly viewable.

According to Micron, high-capacity FeRAM chips will accelerate the development of generative artificial intelligence models. They operate faster than NAND and have exceptional wear resistance. Micron’s proven chip can withstand up to 1015 rewrite cycles. This is several orders of magnitude higher than competing FeRAM chips from Fujitsu, Infineon, SK Hynix and Toshiba; If we are talking about the wear resistance of NAND chips, there is no need to mention thousands of cycles. By the way, the company calls the new memory NVDRAM (non-volatile dynamic random access memory). Apparently FeRAM dared to call it NVRAM to avoid confusion with other types of non-volatile memory.

The write speed of the company’s FeRAM chips is 70-120 ns, while the NAND write cycle is closer to 300 µs. The data retention period in the FeRAM memory (charge in the cell) reaches 10 years.

It can be assumed that Micron gained access to FeRAM patents and technologies after acquiring the assets of the Japanese company Elpida in 2013. Elpida itself did not develop this type of memory, but its then-owned Taiwanese factories Inotera Memories and Nanya Technology, formerly owned by Infineon, were producing FeRAM memory chips.

The FeRAM switching element is generally made of piezoceramics in the form of lead zirconate titanate (PZT). This material retains polarization even after the external signal of the controlling electromagnetic field is removed. Roughly speaking, each FeRAM cell consists of a control transistor and a piezoceramic capacitor. What makes the cell so large is the inclusion of the piezoceramic element. It is unknown how Micron solved this problem.