Samsung Unveils 64GB Flash Memory Chip
564353
By combining a total of 16 separate 64Gb flash devices, businesses can create a 128GB flash storage device capable of holding up to 80 DVD movies or 32,000 MP3 music files.
358319
(InfoWorld) - Flash memory and hard-disk drives could face a challenge from a new chip technology, dubbed phase-change memory, being developed by a group of companies led by IBM. The companies on Monday announced the results of their latest research into the technology, which they say will do a better job of storing songs, pictures, and other data on iPods and digital cameras than current flash memory, and could someday replace disk drives. Among the advances, the companies have built a prototype device that runs 500 times faster than today's flash memory while using half as much power to write data to a memory cell, they said. The circuits on the device are much smaller than those on today's flash chips, measuring just 3 by 20 nanometers, and show that, unlike flash, phase-change memory will be suitable for production on the advanced manufacturing techniques targeted for use in 2015, the companies said. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. The progress came partly from the development of a new material to build the memory chips, a germanium alloy to which the researchers added other elements to enhance its properties. The companies have applied for a patent for the material, they said. Besides IBM, the developers include Qimonda, the DRAM spin-off from Infineon Technologies, and Taiwan's Macronix International Co. They plan to discuss their findings at the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineer's 2006 International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco later this week. It's the kind of breakthrough that people look forward to in the IT industry, although end users will have to be patient before it finds its way into products. It could take several more years for the technology to be developed sufficiently for use in finished products. Still, phase-change memory appears promising. The chips would be a new type of non-volatile memory, which is memory that can hold its electrical charge -- and its data -- after devices are turned off. Flash is also non-volatile, but phase-change memory can hold its electrical charge better than flash and use it more efficiently, its backers say. Flash also faces a roadblock in the future. As engineers make chip circuits more tiny, the circuits leak more power and ultimately lose their ability to store data after being turned off. The size limit appears to be around 45nm, although it will still be years before the flash industry starts using such tiny production technologies. Phase-change memory can be scaled down to 22nm, or far smaller than flash memory, the researchers developing it say. It also appears able to be more durable than flash, whose memory cells start to break down after 100,000 rewrites. While its prospects appear bright, the technology faces several hurdles. New chip designs must be relatively easy to manufacture, and they need to be cost-effective enough to attract device makers. RambusÂ faced this issue when its chips failed to overtake DRAM as the main memory type for PCs several years ago, despite having the backing of Intel. The problem, some companies said, is that the chips was were too costly to produce -- although Rambus vehemently disagrees with this. IBM has posted photos of the phase-change devices here, and some animation clips here.
629138
Samsung unveiled a new mobile chipset with up to 4GB of storage capacity, potentially eliminating the need for add-on memory cards.
87908
Samsung Electronics, the world's top memory chipmaker, said Monday it has developed the industry's first eight-gigabyte flash memory card for mobile handsets.
662300
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. , the world's largest memory chip maker, said it would invest $3.5 billion in its 10-year-old U.S. chip plant by 2008 to produce flash memory chips.
178171
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., the world's largest maker of memory chips, said on Monday it would invest &#36;24 billion in its semiconductor business by 2010.
488340
And pushes PRAM into the limelight Samsung has developed a 40-nanometer memory device, which it today claimed is the first of its kind.â¦
283130
In a flash, Samsung has unveiled its latest removable storage product, and it&#39;s only a quarter of the size of a standard multimedia memory card.
708237
Samsung Electronics is shipping hybrid hard-disk drives that mix conventional magnetic storage with flash memory. The company claims that the system delivers a 70% to 90% cut in power consumption thanks to its ability to use NAND for caching data.
377985
While most mobile phones are lucky to have 4 MB of RAM to store user data, Samsung&#39;s new SPH-V5400 phone offers a whopping 1.5 GB of storage courtesy of its integrated mini-hard drive.
68488
SOUTH Korea &#39;s Samsung Electronics, the world&#39;s largest memory chipmaker, is to invest $US24 billion ($31 billion) in new chip production lines over the next six years.
52425
Samsung Electronics has developed a 8Gb NAND flash memory adopting technologies of processing chips with circuit width of 60nm, the first of its kind in the industry.
262036
Samsung is producing a flash memory-based solid-state disk drive for mobile computing applications.
518899
Samsung Electronics has begun shipping a flash memory-based solid state disk drive (SSD) that offers better performance than many of the flash drives currently available, the company said.The 64GB drive has a SATA II interface that can support data reading at speeds of 100MBps and writing at 80MBps. That makes it 60 percent faster than SATA I drives of the same type and two to five times faster than conventional hard-disk drives, according to Samsung.SSDs use flash memory rather than magnetic storage, which means faster reading and writing of data, lower power consumption and zero noise. They&#39;ve been around for several years although it is only recently, after flash memory chip prices fell, that they have become practical for use in laptop computers.The drives were announced back in November when Samsung started supply samples of the drives to PC makers. Commercial versions of the drive are now available and will be offered as options on some Dell and Alienware laptops in the coming weeks, said Samsung. Prices were not announced.Samsung is also planning to target the enterprise server market and other applications that demand high-speed data transfer.Despite their advantages over hard-disk drives, SSDs are only taking off slowly because they are much more expensive. To get around this problem Samsung showed a 128GB SSD based on MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash, at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It&#39;s a cheaper but not as powerful or efficient version of flash chip than the SLC (single level cell) used in most SSDs drives until now. The SLC-type memory chips last about 10 times as long as MLC chips.&#160;
679267
Seoul, South Korea-based Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has begun shipping a 512Mbit GDDR2 memory device, one it claims is the most advanced graphics double-data-rate synchronous DRAM available.
189857
The new NAND chip design will increase throughput up to 5X
665616
64GB NAND flash memory drives will be an option in a forthcoming Compaq series.