Quinas awarded funding to commercialise advanced memory tech
Quinas Technology has been awarded £300,000 from Innovate UK to commercialise ULTRARAM, computer memory technology that combines the high performance of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) with the non-volatility of flash.
Similar to a compound semiconductor version of flash, ULTRARAM is said to exploit the quantum-mechanical effect of resonant tunnelling, replacing the oxide tunnel barrier in flash with a triple-barrier resonant tunnelling structure. According to the Lancaster University spin out, this eliminates flash’s deficiencies, allowing a floating-gate memory to operate at low voltage and high speed, with high endurance and unprecedented efficiency, but without compromising on non-volatility.
It can store data for over 1,000 years, exceeding the capabilities of flash, and also to be read from and written to very quickly and at lower energy than DRAM.
In a statement, Professor Manus Hayne, ULTRARAM inventor and Quinas Technology’s chief scientific officer, said: “This is a significant first step for a newly formed company and has fired the starting gun in the race to commercialise ULTRARAM, but it will be a marathon, not a sprint. We look forward to tackling the challenges that lie ahead.”
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