imitation game movie

[Chuck Guzis]

On 02/11/2015 05:41 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
> On 02/11/2015 01:20 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>> On 02/11/2015 10:51 AM, Jon Elson wrote:
>>
>>> I never understood why bubble memory didn't continue to progress.
>>> Vertical
>>> Bloch line memory might have eventually developed to the capacity of
>>> modern flash memories, and probably not had the wear-out problem.
>>> They never would have reached the read performance of flash, but might
>>> have kept up with the write performance.
>>
>> Bulky, power-hungry and expensive, mostly--and slow random-access, as
>> it was recirculating.
>>
> Well, the original ones were as you say, but there was a lot of work
> going on to make
> massive improvements.  Yes, you sure would not want to use them as main CPU
> memory.  But, as a solid state disk replacement, as flash memory sticks
> are used
> today, they might have significant advantages.
>> On the other hand, the only thing that seems to be holding MRAM and
>> FRAM back is density.  TI is aggressively marketing MSP430 MCUs with
>> embedded FRAM.
>>
> Yes, the FRAM looks very interesting, they are just starting about 20
> years behind
> other technologies.  But, they may catch up.

I don't think so--density was a problem with bubble memories as with 
FRAM.  I suspect that the geometry needed to hold a charge can simply be 
smaller and easier to fabricate.

Of course,  magnetic recirculating memory is still with us (as disks), 
but I think the sunset is not too far off.

--Chuck