Ever wondered what the perfect memory chip would look like?
Well, it’d have to be faster than the best DRAM, store data for decades like flash memory, and use less energy for high efficiency. 

Sounds like a pipe dream, right? But a team of researchers has developed a prototype material that could make it a reality.

This isn’t a new idea, of course. We’ve discussed the progress of ULTRARAM before. It’s also in the research and development phase but has the potential to hit the market as it works as intended. The only hurdle is scaling up manufacturing and reducing costs before it can replace DRAM and NAND flash.

Now, a team of scientists at Stanford University has published a paper in the Nature journal detailing the development of a new semiconducting material that can be stacked into a superlattice, making it ideal for memory circuits.

The chips we use for DRAM in our PCs and VRAM on graphics cards are mainly based on layers of silicon, metal, and insulators. Inside are billions of cells, comprising transistors and capacitors, that temporarily store charge, used to denote digital information. While very fast, DRAM has a major issue: the charge dissipates rapidly, so cells need periodic refreshing.

On the other hand, NAND flash works similarly but uses high voltage to trap charge in an insulated ‘box’, retaining data for long periods. Known as non-volatile memory, flash is used in SSDs and USB sticks for long-term data storage.

However, it’s slow compared to DRAM and cells wear out over time. We need a memory type with all the advantages and none of the disadvantages, combining volatile and non-volatile memory. That’s the goal of GST467,
a blend of antimony, germanium, and terbium, claimed by the paper’s authors to be the basis of ultimate, universal memory.

So, why is this better than ULTRARAM? Firstly, cells with this material require a much lower operating voltage (0.7V vs 2.5V), reducing power consumption and heat. The paper also suggests the new material is better suited for current semiconductor manufacturing technologies than similar phase-change materials.

However, while ULTRARAM is close to market use, albeit in sectors needing minimal memory or storage (e.g., IoT devices), GST467 is still in the lab phase. Researchers hope to garner interest from the memory industry to scale up manufacturing economically.

For now, the immediate future focuses on ultra-fast DDR5 and GDDR7 for volatile memory, with GDDR7 expected later this year. Samsung, Micron,
and others continue investing in large-capacity flash memory chips for top SSDs, so such efforts are likely to continue.