China's R&D of New Type Memory Chips: One Million Times Faster Performance

Compared to Samsung, Toshiba, and Micron, China's DRAM memory and NAND flash memory technology are lagging behind for many years. However, Chinese researchers have also been chasing the latest generation of technologies. It has been reported recently that China has invested 13 billion yuan to build PCM phase. Change memory, performance is 1,000 times that of ordinary memory chips, and now it is more powerful - Professor Zhang Wei of Fudan University School of Microelectronics, Zhou Peng led the team developed a new two-dimensional non-volatile memory chips, they Using a semiconductor structure, the developed memory chip has excellent performance, which is 1 million times that of a traditional two-dimensional memory chip, and its performance is longer. The refresh time is 156 times that of memory, which means that it has stronger durability.

DIY players should be aware of the respective advantages and disadvantages of memory, flash memory - memory speed, but power loss will lose data, but also expensive, flash memory delay is an order of magnitude higher than the memory, but the benefit is that data can be saved at the same time more cost Low, so the industry has been looking for memory chips that can simultaneously have the advantages of memory and flash memory, that is, can save data at the same time with extremely fast speeds.

The 3D XPoint flash memory developed by Intel has similar features. It is said that its performance is 1,000 times that of flash memory and its durability is 1,000 times that of flash memory. The PCM phase change memory mentioned in the previous news is a similar technology that can save data while power is off. Performance is similar to memory, but these new memory chips have not yet reached the memory, Flash memory is so mature.

Memory chips developed by Chinese scholars are also in this direction. According to their papers published in the magazine “Nature·Nanometer Technology,” the memory chips they developed use FETs that are not based on conventional chips because the physical dimensions of the latter In the case of gradual shrinkage, quantum interference will be encountered. So Zhang Wei and Zhou Peng’s team used a semi-floating gate transistor technology. They showed a Van der Waals heterostructure. Nearly non-volatile semi-floating gate structure, this new memory chip has excellent performance and durability.

Specifically, compared with DRAM memory, its data refresh time is 156 times that of the former, that is, it can hold longer data, and at the same time, it has a write speed of nanosecond (ns) level. (The delay of NAND flash memory is generally Milliseconds), which is one million times faster than conventional two-dimensional materials, so this new type of memory is expected to reduce the gap between traditional memory and flash memory.

Of course, this technical progress is still very good, but do not expect technology to be mass-produced soon, and it is even more unlikely that it will enter the market within the next two or three years. However, new memory chips with the advantages of both DRAM and NAND have this problem and have not matured. Mass production, traditional memory, flash memory has a long life.