Twin Transistor RAM

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This article contains information about scheduled or expected future computer chips.
It may contain preliminary or speculative information, and may not reflect the final specification of the product.

Computer memory types
Volatile
DRAM, e.g. DDR SDRAM SRAM Upcoming Z-RAM TTRAM Historical Williams tube Delay line memory
Non-volatile
ROM PROM EAROM EPROM EEPROM Flash memory Upcoming FeRAM MRAM CBRAM PRAM SONOS RRAM Racetrack memory NRAM Historical Drum memory Magnetic core memory Bubble memory Twistor memory

Twin Transistor RAM (TTRAM) is a new type of computer memory in development by Renesas.

TTRAM is similar to conventional one-transistor, one-capacitor DRAM in concept, but eliminates the capacitor by relying on the floating body effect inherent in a silicon on insulator (SOI) manufacturing process. This effect causes capacitance to build up between the transistors and the underlying substrate, originally considered a nuisance, but here used to replace a part outright. Since a transistor created using the SOI process is somewhat smaller than a capacitor, TTRAM offers somewhat higher densities than conventional DRAM. Since prices are strongly related to density, TTRAM is theoretically less expensive. However the requirement to be built on SOI fab lines, which are currently the “leading edge”, makes the cost somewhat unpredictable at this point.

A similar technology is Z-RAM, which uses only a single transistor and is thus even higher density than TTRAM. Like TTRAM, Z-RAM relies on the floating body effect of SOI, and presumably has a similar manufacturing process. Z-RAM also claims to be faster, as fast as SRAM used in cache, which makes it particularly interesting for CPU designs which are being built on SOI lines anyway.

TTRAM should not be confused with TT-RAM, a type of memory found in Atari TT030 and Falcon030 personal computers. TT-RAM is not used for memory-mapped I/O therefore does not suffer from the bus-contention that slows down the traditional ST-RAM.