MRAM Chips now practical

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

http://www-916.ibm.com/press/prnews.nsf/jan/84358D02BC88EB5C85256D410049436B

IBM has a working MRAM chip (magnetic Random Access Memory) which no longer needs power to keep something in memory. This also eliminates the need for boot up. MRAM is also more compact than the traditional chip and less power hungry meaning that in the next 4 years Super Laptops and new portable tablets will become more feasable.

Life might become very interesting....

[Tage]

That sounds like it could be great! Except I'm still wary of how stray magnetic fields would affect it, which was entirely unaddressed in the article. I mean, what happens when you sit a fridge magnet on top of a laptop with MRAM?

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Im not sure, but I don't think you'd be immediately skragged

[Spriggan]

good point Tage, when I read it I was thinking airports and such.  But not a field that small

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

What if you set it on top of your other computer's monitor? There are problems here, but hopefully they're doing some work arounds.

[Brian]

Isn't MRAM founded on the same basic concept as floppy disks and magnetic tape? They work OK as long as you don't leave them near any strong magnetic fields for too long.

Actually, my biggest concern is the need to clear the memory -- one of the most common reasons for restarting the computer is to completely clear the RAM and start fresh when things go haywire (which they are bound to do at some point). With MRAM everything would be basically stored in the RAM by default, including any settings that happened to be screwy.