Flash memory experts Samsung Electronics and Numonyx have decided to team up and develop market specifications for Phase Change Memory (PCM) products. Phase Change is set to be the next great thing in non-volatile memory technology as it would be able to deliver higher (up to 30 times higher) speeds and support significantly (at least 10 times) more write cycles than both NOR and NAND flash memory.

By working together, the two companies hope to create common hardware and software compatibility for PCM products and thus simplify designs and shorten development time. Samsung and Numonyx are developing common specifications - or 'pin for pin' hardware and software compatibility - for mobile, embedded and other computing applications supporting the JEDEC LPDDR2 Low Power Memory Device Standard.

"Our joint efforts with Numonyx will enable a more secure path for introducing PCM into the mobile environment," said SeiJin Kim, vice president, mobile memory technology planning and enabling, Samsung Electronics. "We anticipate that PCM will eventually be a major addition to our family of memory products, one that will nicely compliment our other mobile memory solutions and ultimately increase our leadership in the industry."

The common specifications between the two companies are expected to be completed this year, so as to enable Samsung and Numonyx to have compliant devices available next year. Samsung has this month started mass production of PRAM (phase change RAM) chips, with the first products providing 512Mb of space.