ONYX - The Phase Change Memory Drive

The much hyped phase change storage technology has finally been publically demonstrated in the form of a prototype disk drive called Onyx. The new method for storing digital data is said to be much faster than any other existing technology. But till now, it was all talk and many skeptics found it hard to believe. Well, all those critics should get ready to eat a humble pie now that this disc drive is out there to answer all their questions. The onyx uses the concept of phase change memory chips and the developers claim that it performs at an unbelievable speed. It can write chunks of data in no time.

Presently, solid state flash memory devices and hard disks based on this technology are widely used and have become quite popular because of the high speed operation. They easily outperform the conventional magnetic hard drives. The University of California San Diego research team that has created this experimental phase change memory device claim that its time that the storage devices get another speed upgrade. The laboratory purpose prototype is the first of its kind and it’s the only proof that phase change theory can actually be implemented for making hard drives in the future. Although many semiconductor manufacturers are working on phase change memory chips, none of them has revealed anything about it.

#-Link-Snipped-#
ONYX Prototype

Steve Swanson, the person behind the Onyx prototype believes that at the moment, the phase change technology is in a nascent stage but will be ready for commercial uses and mass production in a couple of years. Onyx has a data capacity of 8 gigabytes. It was pitted against a state of the art, 80 GB flash drive and it gave it a run for its money. In the tests that required writing small chunks of data, usually in the range of a few hundred kilobytes, the Onyx was found to be 70% to120% faster than its competitors. Also it reduced the processing burden on the CPU to some extent. Onyx also proved its speed when made to read any type and size of data. However, when it came to writing huge blocks of data, the prototype was not so good.

The Onyx is supported by phase change chips made by Micron, a company that’s trying to bring this technology for commercial usage. The chip uses a very simple method to store data. The memory actually comprises of two phases. In one phase, the material has a well organized crystal lattice molecular structure. The second phase or state is an amorphous, asymmetric structure. The chip uses heat in small spurts to switch sections of the material from one phase to other. The two different phases are considered as digital one and zero levels. This process of storing data is much simpler than the flash storage where data is stored as an island of charged carriers on a piece of semiconductor chip. Also, in a flash memory device you cannot rewrite or alter the single bits of information arbitrarily. Instead, the memory erases a fixed amount of data (called a page) and then rewrites the entire revised page. This limits its speed. However, all these things are possible in the phase change hard drives making them faster and less complicated.

So now, it’s clear that the phase change memory devices are faster than the flash memory drives. But the utility and success of Onyx and its successors will depend not only on their exciting features but also on the cost of production, lifespan and ease of maintenance. Some scientists have also suggested that a hybrid device having a combination of these two technologies will be a more feasible option.