From DailyTech: According to a story published by The Nihon Keizai Shimbun's (Nikkei) "Asian Review" section, more than twenty major American and Japanese semiconductor firms have formed a new collaborative alliance, which will work together to develop next generation memory technologies. The group's aim is to develop consumer-ready magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM). MRAM is a technology that some are hoping will replace both long term storage devices (e.g. magnetic hard disc drives and Flash storage) and volatile memory (e.g. DRAM).
Since the modern computer was first devised in the 1940s a perpetual problem has been the inability to find a memory technology that could store data for long-periods of time when powered off (nonvolatile memory), but which would provide comparable speed to powered alternatives (volatile memory).
Even the earliest computers divide memory into nonvolatile storage technologies and volatile (powered) memory devices.
Historically a number of nonvolatile storage methods were used commercially, including drum memory and magnetic-core memory, plus its derivative variants plated-wire, thin-film, and twistor memory).
Since the late 1980s the predominant form of storage in personal computers have been the hard disc drive (HDD), which traditionally was a mechanical construct that stored digital data on a spinning magnetic disk. In the last decade NAND flash-memory has slowly replaced the hard disk, while keeping the same 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch form factors (which are renamed solid state drives (SSDs) to denote the switch from magnetic disks to solid state logic circuit).
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