Hewlett-Packard Co. and SanDisk Corp. are collaborating on a new breed of memory chips, the latest entry in a widening race to improve a basic building block of computers and other devices.

The companies, which are announcing the partnership Thursday, predicted that their forthcoming chips will be 1,000 times faster than flash memory, which is commonplace in smartphones and rapidly moving into corporate data centers. The new chips also will be able to replace the widely used chips known as DRAMs at much lower cost, the partners said.

H-P, the big computer supplier, and SanDisk, which makes memory chips, join a gaggle of companies that aim to upend the $78.5 billion market for digital memory with new, higher-performance technologies.

The goals they described mirror some of those laid out in late July by chip makers Intel Corp. and Micron Technology Inc., which announced a new memory technology they call 3D Xpoint.

Computers hold data for short periods in relatively costly technologies, such as DRAM chips and SRAM circuitry built into microprocessor chips, that transfer data quickly but lose it when power is turned off. For longer-term storage, disk drives and flash memory chips are slower but much less expensive per byte stored.

Designers and chip companies dream of a single fast, affordable technology that combines the best of both, boosting computer performance by eliminating time spent shuttling data between short- and long-term storage.

"We are trying to collapse all of that and try to dramatically simplify the world," said Martin Fink, an H-P executive vice president and chief technology officer.

This so-called universal memory is a pillar of the Palo Alto, Calif., technology giant's research effort dubbed the Machine, an improved computer design that is fundamentally different than the one that has held sway for the past 60 years.

New memory technologies have gained little momentum in the market, as steady improvements in conventional memory technologies have beaten them back. But the conventional way to boost the capacity of flash memory and DRAMs—shrinking the size of tiny transistors that store data—lately has delivered diminishing returns.

The two partners said their collaboration would employ two technologies they have been researching separately: H-P's memristors and SanDisk's resistive random access memory, or RRAM. Both approaches exploit materials that change their electrical resistance in the presence of electric current.

H-P and SanDisk aren't the only ones following this path. Startup Crossbar Inc., for example, has also been developing RRAM. Intel and Micron, which have held back some details of their new technology, have described it in terms similar to what the other companies have disclosed.

The latest partnership "is in the same league as what Micron and Intel have been talking about," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy.

H-P engineers will help develop the new technology, and SanDisk, which operates factories in a venture with Japan's Toshiba Corp., will manufacture the jointly designed chips.

Besides memory chips, the companies plan to collaborate on systems that make use of the technology.

"This is a long-term partnership," said Siva Sivaram, an executive vice president at SanDisk, which is based in Milpitas, Calif.

Beyond the new technologies, many companies working on universal memory are promoting a new business model. Device makers are accustomed to being able to buy DRAMs and flash memory chips from multiple suppliers that compete largely on price. However, H-P and SanDisk say they don't intend to license their technology for others to sell. Intel and Micron announced the same strategy.

Mr. Fink said such chips no longer would be price-driven commodities. "We are moving to a world that is value-based," he said.

Mr. Fink said some partnership's technology may reach the market between 2018 and 2020, but the companies didn't disclose a precise timetable.

Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

 

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 08, 2015 08:55 ET (12:55 GMT)

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