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Samsung Demos Future Memory Chips
Fletcher points to this story in CNET Asia, excerpting "The Korean electronics giant unveiled an 8-gigabit flash memory chip Monday based on the 60-nanometer process, as well as a 2-gigabit DDR DRAM chip based on the 80-nanometer process. Flash chips, which retain data after a host computer is turned off, are used in flash cards and cell phones, while DDR DRAM is used inside PCs."
Generally ram/storage sizes on-die are given as bit sizes, and have been for a very long time. No, it doesn't indicate a data rate.
#include "disclaimer.h"
One gigabit is 128MB. Assuming a 64-bit memory bus width, one chip per bus bit, and 2 gigabits of storage per chip, you're talking about a 16GB DIMM.
So the the terminology inclined, it is a significant advancement.
A good summary of memory technology is here.
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Actually, increasing the RAM reduces the significance of other bottlenecks in a PC.
For example, you can buffer transfers that would otherwise go to or from the hard drive, so you spend less time waiting on I/O.
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The manufacturers of the actual silicon will always use *bit for the size because they are developing something independant of architecture, and therefore *bit is the most relevant notation of size. On a PC it might be relevant to use 'quads' as a measurement, as all machine code and addressing is done in 32 bits, whereas on some older microcontrollers the addressing is in 4 bits, so that would be nibbles. Perhaps some technologies want single-bit accessability, as the storage is not used to store addresses/instructions/ASCII. Using *bit is the only truly platform independant measurement, because the 8-bit bytes is aribtary whilst the bit is indivisible.
#include "disclaimer.h"
They are using conventional storage standards. Memory chips have been measured in (multiples of) bits for decades. When I started paying attention, around 1980 or so, the state of the art was something like 4k or 16k bits for DRAM and those chips were 1-bit wide. Even 8-bit wide chips were, and still are, quoted with storage capacity in bits. Again from the early days, an EEPROM with 2048 words of 8-bits each was described as a 16k device.
Further down in the article it is stated that "The flash chip is designed to let consumer electronics designers put up to 16 gigabytes of data on a single memory card". Note that they use the conventional units, bytes, for memory cards.
Remember, different conventions in different fields. You may think its silly, but that's life and you'd better get used to it.
And, since you ask: no, bits doesn't necessarily imply a rate connectivity. Raw connections are usually rated in bits per second but high level data streams, such as ftp download speeds, are often quoted in bytes per second. I do not know whether there is a parallel here between comms and storage in the different conventions used to specify what the raw technology gives you and what is built out of that technology. I would be interested to learn whether it is more than coincidence.
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
First off, storage chip capacity is always measured in bits, and these chips are most likely (no, I haven't read the FA) 8Gib (eight gibibit, or 8x2^30 bits, i.e. 2^30 bytes or 1GiB). Look at your memory sticks and you will notice that they are equipped with mutliple memory chips, and the same goes for large capacity flash cards. This is not a 1GiB storage card, but a component that can be used to build large storage cards.
What is new and interesting (for chip process nerds) about this is the 60nm process. Current chips are generally produced in a 130nm process. There are also 90nm chips in general production, and they're pretty much the shitnitz at the moment.
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