Stan Beer
Monday, 11 September 2006 17:49
Business IT -
Technology
With two important announcements, Samsung has demonstrated in stunning fashion its power in the flash memory market. Firstly, it has unveiled a 32Gbit NAND flash module the size of a thumbnail. Secondly, it has developed a new type of flash technology called PRAM (Phase-change Random Access Memory) which is claimed to be 30 times as fast as conventional flash.
The 32Gbit flash is Samsung's first memory
device produced using a 40 nanometer manufacturing process. The new
memory device has been designed for use in high storage portable
devices such as MP3 and MPEG4 players and makes possible the
development of 64GB memory cards for such devices.
In the other bit of news out of Samsung, believes its new PRAM
technology will be a viable competitor to NOR flash over the next
decade. Among things PRAM does not need to erase data before rewriting
new data, which contributes to its order of magnitude speed advantage.
In addition, Samsung claims that PRAM will also last more than 10
times longer than conventional flash memory. One of the drawbacks of flash is
its limited life span, it's relatively slow speed and the low number of
times it can be rewritten. PRAM is designed address all these issues.