Gonna Live Forever: Flash Memory with Slower Decay

by jordan | July 17, 2008 at 11:08 am | 311 views | 9 comments

by violinist452000

Oh, those clever scientists. They've found a way to make flash memory last longer, use less power, and manage cell failure in a more even-handed manner. Currently, flash memory goes bad after around ten years, all things being equal. Your mileage may vary if you save stuff with great frequency (kind of the point of flash memory, no?), or use a memory stick as virtual RAM (a Vista feature).

A newly-developed verison of flash will last an average of 100,000,000 saves, and, should a chunk of the memory go bad, the whole stick isn't toast... just those cells (which hopefully held a few LOLcats and not your Phd thesis).

The new ferroelectric NAND flash technology can do rewrites 100 million times, versus the 10,000 or so of existing tech, and can be scaled down to 10nm—one third the size of next-gen conventional flash. Furthermore, the ferroelectric chips use a "wear leveling" system to even-out the usage of memory cells, and can even disable bad cells without killing the whole chip.

Flash memory chips are widely used in products such as Apple's iPhone, mini notebooks like the Asus Eee PC, video games consoles such as the Nintendo Wii, flash memory cards, digital cameras and Flash-based SSD hard disk drives.

Current Flash chips are estimated to have a useful lifetime of around a decade for most applications.

However, some applications that require repeated writing and rewriting of data can theoretically cause cells to wear out much faster, sometimes rendering a Flash device useless within a few years.

Alas, we'll have to wait a bit for these things to hit the consumer market.

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zichi

at 15:46 on July 17th, 2008

Good reason to keep important data on every kind of medium we just don't know which one will last. I still have quite a collection of 'floppy disks'

zichi

at 15:46 on July 17th, 2008

good stuff:

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.

_pollux

at 13:31 on July 18th, 2008

versatility is a major point now. all flash disks are only for storage, others have gone a step ahead and made them into tools that can get you by in your day to day dealings and also save a whole lot of data in a flash.

_pollux has contributed a photo to this story.

Rebecca and Bernhard

at 18:18 on July 18th, 2008

After having my kids steal and destroy so many of my old toys, I decided it was time to strike back. I failed on the destroying bit as it turned out quite well. The USB Drive had a green LED which is visible through the bonnet scoop + front windscreen when the stick is plugged in.

Rebecca and Bernhard has contributed a photo to this story.

Rojer

at 18:49 on July 18th, 2008

Among the more interesting little gadgets at MacWorld Expo 2008.

Rojer has contributed a photo to this story.

silversurfer28422

at 20:50 on July 18th, 2008

These are just a few of my flash drive creations. Since these, I have made many more, ranging from flash drive dogs, hot rod cars, to Han Solo in carbonite drives. I have been listing my creations with Etsy, a craft website, and they have been selling like hotcakes. My Etsy store is called Jason's Creations. The link is www.jasonscreations.etsy.com
Feel free to look around and enjoy.
Jason

silversurfer28422 has contributed a photo to this story.

Drab Makyo

at 22:26 on July 18th, 2008

As the price of flash drives drops and the idea of cyclic use to prolong their lifespan gets perfected, I foresee these coming more and more into the forefront. Even now, they're practically required on my college campus.

Drab Makyo has contributed a photo to this story.

p180t895

at 19:01 on July 19th, 2008

Flash drives are the new sneaker net electronic media.

Recently, I have been sharing a collection of wound photos with several doctors. At more than 150 MB, I can't E-Mail them and the doctors don't really want to learn to use FTP. They can quickly copy the photos to their computer and then look at the photos, as their schedule allows.

The photo I contributed is of a Corsair CMFUSB2.0-8GB (USB flash drive) with neck lanyard. It also comes with a (not pictured) USB extension cord, which is very handy in different physical situations (or for other USB devices). The design downside of this flash drive is the cap doesn't attach to the drive so it is left loose and one can lose it. Kingston makes a 4GB flash drive that allows the cap to attach to the end of the drive, thus protecting it from loss while the drive is in use.

p180t895 has contributed a photo to this story.

poptartlove

at 15:25 on July 20th, 2008

THIS PIC IS ONLY HALF OF THE HALF MOON FACE I MADE FOR A FRIEND, i used femo but toke the flash out to bake it and saddly the femo shrunk about1/8 inch creating a gap.

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