NEC, Toshiba in MRAM development tie-up

NEC Corp and Toshiba Corp have agreed to jointly develop next-generation magnetic random access memory chips, which are expected to greatly reduce power consumption for personal computers, cellular phones and other portable electronic devices, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported, citing sources at the companies.

The partners aim to establish mass-production technology by 2005 and launch MRAM as the primary memory technology, replacing DRAMs and flash-memory chips.