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Jim Handy, an analyst at Semico Research in Phoenix, AZ, says there is already a large demand for such inexpensive embedded memory. "What Freescale promises to do is open up the possibility to put larger memories onto an economically sized chip," he says.
The tricky thing about the Freescale process, Handy says, is distributing the nanocrystals. It's like "steam condensation on a window...if they put too much on, the droplets will start touching each other and linking together, which is the last thing that they want -- they want them to be all stand-alone. But if they put on too few, then they don't get a useful number of them. That's the secret sauce that they bring to the party."
Albert Fazio, director of memory technology development at Intel in Santa Clara, CA, says his company is also exploring technologies -- metal particles as well as silicon nanocrystals -- that could replace the polysilicon gates in flash memory. But such innovations probably won't be necessary, he says, until the end of the decade, by which time it will be difficult to shrink components further using current techniques. And flash memory leader Samsung shares that view, according to a company spokesperson.
By then, flash could have some stiff competition from other new nonvolatile memory technologies. Freescale, for one, later this year plans to commercialize an MRAM (magnetoresistive random access memory) chip, based on a type of memory that could eventually replace both the high-speed memory in a computer and flash memory in cell phones and digital cameras. MRAM stores information not by storing electrons but by changing the magnetic state of a material.
Meanwhile, Fazio says the most promising replacement for flash is something called phase-change memory, which uses lasers to switch a material between crystalline and amorphous states. This technology, he says, could scale down to the "5-to-10-nanometer range," a fraction the size of today's memory elements.
Intel and STMicroelectronics have formed a joint venture that plans to commercialize phase-change memory.
Two firms have doubled the capacity of phase-change memory, a likely replacement for flash.
A nanotech-enabled device could replace the flash memory used in portable electronics.
Guest (Zmorg77)
RE: "Fazio says the most promising replacement for flash is something called phase-change memory, which uses lasers to switch a material between crystalline and amorphous states. This technology, he says, could scale down to the "5-to-10-nanometer range," a fraction the size of today's memory elements."
For those interested, Phase Change Memory is also known as Ovonic Unified Memory. OUM is being commercialized by Ovonyx a company owned by Energy Conversion Devices and Intel. Ovonyx licensees include Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Intel, Elpida, BAE Systems, Nanochip. IBM, Macronix, SST, Philips, Wintonic, Infineon, and others also have ongoing phase change development projects but are not yet Ovonyx licensees.
LINK:http://www.ovonic.com/sol_srv/3_5_information_sol/information_sol.htm
Another Forced, But Pointless Response From Mrs. Rawlings
The new ideas for the new small and trendy flash drive is a truly genius idea. By making flash drives smaller and less expensive, it allows more people to buy them and since they are small and use less silicon, more of them can be made for the more people that want to buy them. The public is benefiting, because everyone wants a smaller thing of what already is (example: iPod nano) and the companies producing these new flash drives are profiting from it as well. It is a system that is advancing technology.
I think that this new flash drive will be a huge jump in storeing files from the computor. If this device does what they say it will and is cheaper than other forms of memory storage i think that it will be a good investment oppurtunity. If this form of memory is used in many other divices like cell phones and pdas there will be alot of money to be made off it.
Guest (We Have Too Much Homework)
These new ideas about memory both sound efficient and promising. With the new tiny silicon crystals, there are minute amounts of insulation and less unused space in the different appliances. These new flash-based gadgets will not only be smaller but also cheaper and everything is better when it is smaller and cheaper. This company has already come out with one new flash drive, so i trust they will come out with something soon that will help.
I agree, lots of company will race about the flash memory. It will be important way to carry informations in the future. Sot they are going to use cheap materials and get new idea to make more than before. So I guess that everybody will be able to buy flash memory because it will be cheaper than now!
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.
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Guest (This is great)
How small is small?
Holy cow
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