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FERAM COULD WELL REPLACE FLASH in the near future. Both types of memory are non-volatile, they retain information after they have been switched off. The big difference with FeRAM is its speed.
FeRAM has been around for a good while but this marks a big step forward. Toshiba and Infineon reported that the new 32Mbit memory has a much lower power requirement than flash memory. Flash requires extra power to put something new onto it whereas FeRAM does not, making the latter perfect for low power devices such as PDAs and mobile phones.
The memory works using ferroelectric crystals. When an electric field is applied to a crystal, the central atom moves toward the field. If the electric field is removed, the central atom stays in the same place.
The Toshiba/Infineon memory is relatively fast with an access time of 50 nanoseconds and a cycle time of 75 nanoseconds. Not quite SDRAM speed but much faster than flash where a program time of 200 microseconds is considered good.
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