Despite early promise, ITRI has found PRAM difficult to manufacture. The research group plans to finish a few PRAM-related research projects that run through the end of this year, but then phase them out of its focus.

Researchers often run into hurdles on the way to developing a new technology, but the bar for a DRAM or NAND replacement is even higher. DRAM was invented by IBM decades ago and perfected over the years by other companies and research groups. The chips dominate PCs because of the high speeds they're able to handle data, but they do have a drawback. Once the power is off, DRAM chips forget all their data.

NAND flash memory is different in that it can hold a large amount of data whether a device is on or off, but it runs too slow to replace DRAM.