The State of Memory Technology Over the past decade there has been rapid growth in the speed of micropro cessors. CPU speeds are approximately doubling every eighteen months, while main memory speed doubles about every ten years. The International Tech nology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) study suggests that memory will remain on its current growth path. The ITRS short-and long-term targets indicate continued scaling improvements at about the current rate by 2016. This translates to bit densities increasing at two times every two years until the introduction of 8 gigabit dynamic random...