News for Saturday, 13 May 2006

Msystems has announced a major breakthrough in the field of NAND flash memories. Their technology will soon allow the storage of 4 bits in a base memory cell instead of 2 bits now, thus doubling the total storage capacity.
Given that no changes in the lithography or in the overall manufacturing processes are required to implement it, the doubling of the capacity could take place as early as in 2007, according to Msystems.
In order to have 4 bits work reliably in the same cell, the company had to develop new data control algorithm and these new memories are therefore enabled with Error Correction Control (ECC).
NAND memory has been a booming market for quite a while now. These chips are used in iPod Nanos and in every single USB key.
On top of the regular capacity increase, this doubling may soon promote flash - for the moment stuck at 4GB - as a direct competitor of hard disks.